Oral Answers to Questions

HEALTH

The Secretary of State was asked—

Mental Health Care Hospitals

Tony Baldry: What the Government's policy is on the optimum size of mental health care hospitals.

Rosie Winterton: It is for local trusts to determine the configuration of their provision according to their assessment of the needs of their population, the range of community and residential services already in place, and the resources available to them.

Tony Baldry: For many years, Banbury has had residential community mental health care, but that facility is being closed and will in future be centralised in Oxford. My constituents and many people in Oxfordshire want to understand how these ever-larger mental health care units are compatible with the concept of care in the community.

Rosie Winterton: As the hon. Gentleman knows, it is for local primary care trusts to commission appropriate services for their population needs in the light of national guidance and the resources available. Care for people with mental health needs is increasingly being provided by the crisis resolution teams, home treatment teams and assertive outreach teams that are developing in all areas. The idea is as far as possible to keep people out of hospital and to provide care in people's homes, which is where they and their carers wish to have it.

Brian Iddon: Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a need to separate men from women and older patients from younger patients where they have incompatible lifestyles? Does she also agree that drug addicts and alcoholics can be a nuisance on wards, and that a larger hospital should be able to achieve such separations better than a smaller one?

Rosie Winterton: I agree with my hon. Friend. Our evidence is that more than 99 per cent. of NHS trusts now provide single-sex sleeping accommodation. Obviously, patient safety is paramount, and we have recently issued further guidance on that matter. Since 1997, about £720 million has been spent on upgrading psychiatric facilities to deal with the points that my hon. Friend raises. Later this week, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, with the Secretary of State for Education and Skills, will publish information on these issues, including children's services.

Michael Spicer: What is the budgeted cost of the Mental Health Bill?

Rosie Winterton: Overall, we have spent around £300 million extra on mental health over the past three years. "Shifting the Balance of Power" provides for local primary care trusts to use the massive amount of extra investment that is being made available as they see fit within the national service framework. That investment will have increased by up to £90 billion by 2007. Within that, an extra £300 million has already been spent on mental health services, and we expect that amount to increase within the next few years.

Tim Loughton: Notwithstanding the answer that the Minister gave just now, if she is taking the whole subject of hospital mental health services seriously, can she explain why Mind, in its report "Ward Watch", which was published last week, found that 23 per cent. of recent and current in-patient respondents were accommodated in mixed-sex wards a year after the Government claimed 99 per cent. compliance, that a third of patients did not have access to single-sex bathroom facilities, and that a climate of fear, harassment and abuse exists on mental health wards, with cleanliness leaving a lot to be desired? When are the Government going to treat mental health patients on an equal basis with everyone else in the NHS?

Rosie Winterton: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman did not hear some of the facts that I stated earlier. I accept that Mind issued its "Ward Watch" campaign document. Its survey was fairly small, covering 4 per cent. of people with experience of mental services, approximately only 2 per cent. of whom were being treated by mental health services when it was conducted.
	The hon. Gentleman needs to recognise the additional investment—£720 million extra—to upgrade psychiatric facilities that has been made since the Government came to power. We believe that 99 per cent. of wards now provide single-sex sleeping accommodation. However, when I met Mind representatives last week, I said that if they wished to provide information in relation to wards where that was not happening, we would take the matter up. They accepted that their figures did not tally with ours, but I promised to look into any instances that they provided of mixed-sex sleeping accommodation.

Children's Hospices

Peter Luff: What assessment he has made of the contribution that children's hospices make to palliative care.

Stephen Ladyman: Children's hospices make a very important contribution to the support of children with life-threatening illnesses and their families, and in providing emergency, respite and end-of-life care.

Peter Luff: I am sure that the movement will be pleased to hear the Under-Secretary's endorsement in advance of next week's children's hospice week. However, does he share my concern about the much lower amount of funding that children's hospices receive from statutory sources, as compared with adult hospices? Does he understand that a hospice such as Acorns children's hospice, which will open in Worcester next year and serve a large geographical area—most of the south-west midlands and Gloucestershire—has to look for funding packages from up to 33 different primary care trusts? Has the time not come to consider again the quantum and management of funding for children's hospices?

Stephen Ladyman: First, the hon. Gentleman mentioned the children's national service framework, which we intend to publish tomorrow, not next week.

Peter Luff: No, I mentioned children's hospice week.

Stephen Ladyman: My apologies—I thought that the hon. Gentleman referred to the children's NSF.
	Acorns Children's Hospice Trust is currently in discussion with the local primary care trust, which is being supportive. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be happily surprised by the outcome of the discussions. He made a point about a general uplift in funding. He must realise that children's hospices provide one of a range of services of which children with palliative care needs may make use, which include home care and hospital care. We could set a blanket figure for the proportion of funding that comes from the national health service only in one of two ways: either by unbalancing the mix of care, which would mean that some children who currently receive home care would no longer receive it, or by providing more money. The hon. Gentleman's commitment to 40 per cent. funding for hospices might make an interesting press release, but he does not intend to provide that extra money for the health service.

Michael Foster: Further to the comments of the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff) about the Acorns trust in Worcester, and given that it serves the three counties of Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire, will my hon. Friend write to the range of primary care trusts and local authorities in those counties to ensure that they do what they can to provide a more secure statutory funding basis for it, thereby making sure that it is there for children who will need it in future?

Stephen Ladyman: I am happy to ensure that the primary care trusts in those areas realise what their responsibilities are—I shall certainly do that for my hon. Friend. However, I assure him that they do understand those responsibilities. They are in active negotiation with the Acorns trust, have a close relationship with it as regards its two existing hospices, and are in discussion, which I hope will prove fruitful, about the one that is proposed for the near future.

Lindsay Hoyle: My hon. Friend makes a reasoned case, but he should examine the inconsistency between the funding for adult hospices and that for children's hospices. The poor relationship between the two in getting direct funding is the important issue. Derian house gets so little funding. We get some from the local primary care trust, and although children come from as far away as Scotland and London, the funding must be raised locally. We should ensure that we get equal match funding as between adult and children's hospices directly from the NHS. The sooner that happens, the better. It will ensure that the required service continues.

Stephen Ladyman: While I share my hon. Friend's desire to see the children's hospice movement succeed, I cannot agree with the solution that he proposes. That is because children's palliative care is a very different proposition from adult palliative care. Adult palliative care tends to involve end-of-life provision, whereas children's palliative care tends to involve long-term provision, respite or emergency care, and managing chronic conditions. It is therefore important that primary care trusts ensure that there is proper balanced provision and full availability of home care in their area. It might not be appropriate to have the same level of funding for an adult hospice as for a children's hospice in any particular area, so I cannot agree with my hon. Friend's solution to the problem.

Care Homes

Andrew Stunell: If he will make a statement on the availability of care home places for the (a) elderly and (b) physically disabled.

Stephen Ladyman: The independent Laing and Buisson survey shows that there is sufficient capacity to meet the demand for care home places nationally. We recognise that there are supply problems in some areas and have given councils extra funding to tackle them. However, going into a care home is not an inevitable outcome of growing old or being vulnerable, and we are giving people a choice as regards when and where they receive care.

Andrew Stunell: I thank the Minister for that reply. He cited the survey a little selectively, because 9,600 places have been lost nationally in the last year, 2,100 of them in the north-west. Does he accept that that will mean more bed blocking and less choice for patients and clients? Will he undertake to make it easier for social services to pay a viable rate for high-quality care, to keep those places available for my constituents?

Stephen Ladyman: The hon. Gentleman has given us an object lesson in quoting selectively. He did not mention the fact that Laing and Buisson also said that the demand for care home places fell by almost the same amount as the number of places that were lost. He did not mention that Laing and Buisson said that there were now 486,000 places available, which is 16,000 more than they identified as being available last year. He did not say that his own council, Stockport, has had a 71 per cent. cash increase since 1997 to fund these measures. If the council is not taking strategic responsibility for ensuring that there are no problems in the hon. Gentleman's constituency, it will hardly come as a surprise to the rest of us, as that council is Liberal Democrat controlled.

Claire Curtis-Thomas: Will my hon. Friend be kind enough to inform me how people with diminished responsibility who are incapable of making decisions on their own behalf can access health services to ensure that they do not become physically ill?

Stephen Ladyman: My hon. Friend will be interested in the forthcoming debate on the Mental Capacity Bill, which will allow for provision for people to receive the appropriate support when they have to make such decisions. Generally, in regard to older people's care and the care of people with learning disabilities and other problems that might diminish their capacity to make decisions, we expect councils and national health service bodies to work closely with those people and their families and advisers to ensure that they are able to access all services and to take the best possible decisions in their own interest.

Simon Burns: On the question of the occupancy and availability of care home beds, will the Minister tell the House how many people have been wrongly charged for their care in a care home in the past seven years? How many people have been reimbursed for being wrongly charged since the health service ombudsman uncovered this scandal? Why, when many of these people are dying during the delays in sorting the mess out, has the Minister missed so many of his own targets relating to reporting to the House? Has he met the target that he set in June, which was that every outstanding case up to 31 March this year would be dealt with by 31 July?

Stephen Ladyman: First, the hon. Gentleman is referring to NHS continuing care, which is not necessarily provided in care homes. He is absolutely right to say that there were a great many cases in which we believe mistakes to have been made, and we are working hard to deal with them. However, those cases do not primarily involve people who are still alive. Strategic health authorities have prioritised ensuring that compensation claims are dealt with and wrong decisions are corrected in regard to people who are still alive. The backlog that remains relates to people who have passed away, and we are now dealing with their estates. The hon. Gentleman knows that perfectly well, because I reported the relevant figures in my last written statement. I promised to make another written statement to the House as soon as possible. I never promised to make a statement on 8 September; I promised to do so as soon as possible, and I will. It would be inappropriate for me to give the House figures now, before I have made a full statement to the House.

Hospital-acquired Infections

Bob Spink: If he will give the most recent rate of hospital-acquired infection for (a) the NHS and (b) private sector health care providers.

John Hutton: It is estimated that hospital-acquired infections affect 9 per cent. of NHS in-patients, which is broadly similar to the level in other European countries. For example, estimates for the Netherlands and Spain are 7 per cent. and 8 per cent. respectively, and it is estimated that rates could be as high as 10 per cent. in France. There are no estimates available for rates of hospital-acquired infections in the independent sector.

Bob Spink: What is undeniable is that these superbugs are growing like Topsy. They are afflicting more and more people, and will continue to do so unless we tackle the issue. Does the Minister, who is an excellent Minister, agree that one way to tackle it would be to publish clear statistics for every single hospital in the country, and to give patients the right to choose? That would put the onus where it ought to be, and force the system to correct itself. The right to choose is the way forward.

John Hutton: The hon. Gentleman is an excellent Member of Parliament, too. I agree with him both in relation to publishing this information and giving patients the right to choose. Those are the Government's policies. In relation to publishing rates of MRSA infections, we have been doing that, and that information is available. In the case of Southend hospital, for example, which serves his constituency—it is also an excellent hospital, because both my mum and two of my sisters have worked there—last year, the trust reported an improvement in its MRSA infection rates. Obviously, there is more to be done, but it is equally true that many parts of the NHS are engaging properly with that debate right now.

Gisela Stuart: When my right hon. Friend considers infection rates, will he take into account the fact that a significant number of patients entering hospital already have such an infection? Research shows that something like 17 per cent. of patients in nursing homes are infected, and University Hospital Birmingham NHS Trust found that something like 40 per cent. of patients had it in their blood culture. So the figures are not necessarily a direct reflection of the hospital's performance, but of a much wider picture.

John Hutton: My hon. Friend is right, for the simple reason that, as we all know, MRSA is widespread in the community at large. It is not a bug that is simply manufactured and cultivated inside hospitals—obviously not. What we record are incidences of bloodstream MRSA infections, which is important if the national health service is to have a proper understanding of the nature of the problem. There is concern on both sides of the House, which I share, and we need to do more. I understand that, and we are trying to do that. It ill behoves Opposition Members to point the finger of blame at us for not doing enough, given that they were the ones who refused to collect the information in the first place.

Peter Lilley: Can the Minister explain why, in the years during which I have been pursuing the issue of hospital-acquired infections, an increasing number of consultants, doctors and nurses have contacted me to say that in their hospitals the problem is made worse by the fact that clinical priorities are overridden by Government targets and bureaucratic priorities? Could that be the reason why the situation is worse in this country than in most countries of Europe, and according to the European Commission, is getting worse faster in this country than in the rest of Europe?

John Hutton: I pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman, who has been clear in his concerns, which he has raised over several years, but there are no data connecting waiting times targets with levels of HAIs. Bed occupancy rates in the US, for example, are very much the same as here, and it has similar rates of hospital-acquired infections. We need to focus on initiatives that we know work: the hand hygiene campaign, for example, will make a significant difference. It is not the case, however, that all those unfortunate infections can always been prevented. We estimate that up to a third can, and it is important that the NHS does all that it can to focus on those cases on which it can do more. That is what we are doing.

Stephen McCabe: Obviously, I am interested in the views of consultants who write to the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley), but can we contrast those with the views of trade union leaders and nurses who write to me saying that the problem has got worse since the contracting-out of cleaning services, for which his Government were responsible?

John Hutton: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has restored a bit of balance to this debate. We have raised such issues with the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) previously, and we differ from him and his colleagues on this matter. I do not believe that the pursuit of compulsory competitive tendering led to an overall increase in standards of cleanliness in our hospitals—and the buck for that policy, I am afraid, rests entirely with him and his hon. Friends.

Andrew Lansley: If the right hon. Gentleman is an excellent Minister, he will have taken steps to identify and investigate the circumstances reported by the National Audit Office in which infection control teams recommended bed and ward closures. What practical steps has he taken?

John Hutton: The guidance on ward closures still exists. It dates from the time when the hon. Gentleman's party was in government, and the Cooke report. We have made no changes whatever to the guidance that the hon. Gentleman—I assume—supported, as an active Conservative.
	When the hon. Gentleman referred to the NAO report figures last week, he spoke of about 12 per cent. of cases in which ward closures did not result from the advice of local infection teams. That is a matter for concern. It is not clear from the report—the hon. Gentleman has no data and nor, unfortunately, have I—where the decision was countermanded. Was it countermanded by, for instance, clinical directors or other medical staff in the hospital?
	What the NAO report does say—I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman did not confirm this—is that in nearly 90 per cent. of cases the advice was followed. I think that that is progress in the right direction.

Andrew Lansley: It is precisely in regard to that 12 per cent. that the Minister has told us that he has no information—no data. What steps is he taking?
	It is true that when infection control teams make recommendations, they do so on the basis of risk assessments. It is in patients' interests, and necessary for their safety, that the recommendations be followed. Ninety per cent. is not a good enough result. In 12 per cent. of cases, the advice was not followed: it was countermanded by hospital management. The NAO said that in 2 per cent. of cases it was advised against by the strategic health authority, which is directly under the Minister's control. Will he now tell us that on no future occasions when infection control teams have made the appropriate risk assessments and recommended a bed or ward closure will that recommendation be ignored for the purpose of pursuing the hospital's waiting list targets?

John Hutton: As my right hon. Friend made clear in last week's debate, we have always believed that these are matters for clinical judgment and clinical priorities, which should always be dealt with on that basis in the national health service.

General Practitioners

Adrian Bailey: What change there has been in the provision of general practitioners since 1997.

John Reid: Since 1997, there has been an increase of 3,081—11 per cent.—in the number of GPs, excluding retainers, registrars and locums, and an increase of 1,096—no less than 81.6 per cent.—in the number of doctors training to be GPs. In March 2004, there were 31,127 GPs, the highest number in the history of the NHS. I believe that those record numbers show the Government's commitment to expanding the GP work force.

Adrian Bailey: Those figures are reflected in my constituency, which has historically been underprovided with GPs. There are still shortages, however, and to get around the problem local practices have been pooling resources, sharing information technology, appointment systems and the recruitment of positions' assistants. What steps are being taken to promote such examples of best practice in other areas with chronic shortages, and ensure that everyone everywhere enjoys the standard of service that we should expect?

John Reid: I am aware of the steps that have been taken by my hon. Friend's local primary care trusts, particularly Wednesbury and West Bromwich PCT. In partnership with Birmingham and The Black Country strategic health authority and other local PCTs, it has been developing a fairly radical plan to improve its own GP recruitment and retention.
	Nationally, we are taking action to ensure that the current record number of GPs can work in partnership whenever possible, to ensure excellent primary care provision. For example, the national primary care development team is working with practices to promote primary care modernisation, and some 5,000 practices are taking part. That covers more than 32 million patients in England. Not only do we have a record number of GPs; increasingly, GPs are working in partnership to produce an even better service.

Alan Beith: Is the Minister aware that one of the changes of which constituents are most conscious is the withdrawal of practices from night cover, which has resulted in my constituency in an area of 1,000 square miles having resident within it only one doctor on duty between midnight and 8 am? That has put great pressure on the ambulance service, and some health authorities have been reported as having to recruit doctors from Germany to provide night cover. One Scottish health board has had to pay £1,000 a night for health cover. Has this part of the new contract not gone rather worryingly wrong?

John Reid: I do not believe that it has gone worryingly wrong. That part of the new contract, allied with the record number of general practitioners in this country, is meant to give a greater, better and faster service to patients. However, if the right hon. Gentleman brings to my attention examples about which he is concerned as the arrangements develop, I will certainly look further into specific cases. As a general point, it is necessary to make it absolutely plain—everyone must understand this—that we are committed to ensuring that patients have access to high-quality, appropriate and timely health care out of hours. I can tell the right hon. Gentleman that the Minister of State, Department of Health, my right hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (Mr. Hutton) will shortly be publishing requirements that clarify exactly what is expected of out-of-hours cover. I can make it absolutely clear in the meantime that that will include access to home visits—this is very important—from a GP, should a patient's condition require it, and access to a Saturday morning surgery.

Andrew MacKinlay: May I remind the Secretary of State that one aspect of the Government's policy and programme that both he and I enthusiastically support is the development of the Thames gateway? I should like to draw to his attention the need for him to discuss with the Minister for London and with my primary care trust the acute shortage that already exists in Thurrock—a new town with an urban development corporation and an awful lot of single GP practices. If we are to succeed in our policy objectives, we need truly joined-up government as between my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, to ensure that my constituents' needs for GPs are met. I am currently facing a crisis and there must be sufficient GP provision as we build up the area and make it a quality place in which to live.

John Reid: My hon. Friend will have heard what I said about the national picture in England and about the record number of GPs. He will also know that, throughout the country, about 19 out of 20 patients can now see a GP within 48 hours and a nurse practitioner within 24. However, I recognise that there are regional variations and particular problems in certain areas. Nineteen out of 20 implies that some people do not secure that access. On the implications of the Thames gateway project, I can tell my hon. Friend that we are aware of it; that we have made more money available because of it; and that we are ahead of him in that we are already entering discussions, through my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, with the local primary care trusts. I hope that my hon. Friend does not feel that the door is so open that he has fallen through it, but he is certainly pushing a door that is already ajar.

Marion Roe: I welcome the Government's target of 2,000 new GPs, but does the Secretary of State agree that simply referring to the total number of GPs does not reveal the difference between whole-time equivalents and part-timers? After all, the British Medical Association says that we need 10,000 new doctors. Will the Secretary of State tell the House how and when this target will be achieved and what plans he has to recruit more GPs?

John Reid: That is an excellent question from an excellent Member of Parliament. First, I welcome her support—[Interruption.] Indeed. She followed another excellent Member of Parliament in the previous question. I welcome her support for sensible targets and objectives for increasing the number of doctors. Secondly, I can assure her that we not only have a record number of GPs in terms of head count, but the biggest ever increase in terms of whole-time equivalents as well. Thirdly, I would say that this is a slightly different thing from saying that we have as many GPs as we want and need. We do not: there is still a shortage. The addition of 19,000 doctors in our seven years in office is something about which we can have some satisfaction, but it does not make us in the least complacent.
	Finally, in respect of achieving all the objectives that the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Dame Marion Roe) so sensibly outlined, it would be a disaster to approach that task by reducing the money going to the mainstream NHS and introducing charges for NHS patients. Perhaps she should have a word with hon. Members on her own Front Bench about that.

Patrick Cormack: May I congratulate the Secretary of State on his admirable bedside manner? Does he agree that the best general practitioners are those who know their patients as individuals? To revert to a point made by the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), what percentage of GPs offer an out-of-hours service, compared with the percentage that obtained in 1997?

John Reid: The number of GPs offering out-of-hours services is changing as a result of the new contract, but I would not like to say that it has changed dramatically. There has been a gradual change in such provision over the period as, for example, more co-operatives and locums have come to be used. Opposition Front-Bench Members should not pretend that that did not happen under the previous Government. Things are changing because of the new contract, and we will keep a close eye on that, but I have made it plain already that we fully expect that those who need a GP call-out can get one, and that Saturday morning surgeries will be provided. My right hon. Friend the Minister of State will repeat that message in more specific terms later this week, and he may even offer more detail later today.

NHS Dental Services

Peter Pike: If he will make a statement on progress in the north-west in providing NHS dental services.

Rosie Winterton: An extra £7.5 million was allocated in July to strategic health authorities in the north-west to improve immediate access to NHS dentistry. In the longer term, we are radically reforming the way in which dentistry is delivered, supported by £368 million of additional investment. That includes recruiting the equivalent of 1,000 extra dentists by October 2005, and training an extra 170 dentists each year.

Peter Pike: I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for that answer and for her personal interest in the provision of NHS dentistry in Burnley and east Lancashire. I am pleased to hear what the Government are doing to address the problem, but I am sure that she will know that more constituents write to me every week about this matter than about any other. One of the biggest problems is that people who are entitled to free NHS dental services often cannot afford to go to the places where they can receive them. What can we do to deal with that matter as a priority?

Rosie Winterton: My hon. Friend is right to say that there are problems with immediate access and that one of them is the distance that people have to travel to obtain NHS dentistry. That is why we have asked each primary care trust to draw up a dental action plan, saying how they will use some of the extra money that we have made available now to overcome those problems. I have looked at the plan in my hon. Friend's area and can assure him that it will improve access for about 37,500 people. Not all of those will be new patients because some will be NHS patients who will not have to travel as far as they do at the moment.

Ann Cryer: Is my hon. Friend aware of any innovations, either in the pipeline or being tried out, that could help the situation in the north-west and in my constituency, where there is a severe shortage of NHS dentistry provision? For example, would it be possible to use mobile dental surgeries?

Rosie Winterton: My hon. Friend is right, and a number of dental action plans will involve mobile surgeries. At the same time, we are looking at international recruitment and at encouraging dentists who may not be practising at the moment to return to work. We have had 186 inquiries in response to our advertisements about that. However, we also want PCTs to look locally at how they can attract dentists into their areas, perhaps by moving people to the new contract more quickly or by considering some of the ideas in respect of international recruitment or mobile surgeries. Every PCT is drawing up a plan to say how it will spend the extra money with which we have provided it.

Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust

John Grogan: If he will make a statement on the financial situation of the Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust.

Melanie Johnson: The West Yorkshire strategic health authority is currently working with the trust to agree a sustainable financial recovery plan that delivers an appropriate level of health care for the local community.

John Grogan: Is my hon. Friend aware that I have been told that, in order to meet financial targets, senior managers at the trust are considering bringing forward proposals within the next month that would involve the closure of the accident and emergency unit at Pontefract general infirmary? Such proposals would be completely unacceptable to the people of mid-Yorkshire as far east as the villages of Sherburn-in-Elmet and Osgoldcross in my constituency. Can she provide me with any reassurances and will the Secretary of State agree to meet local Members of Parliament to discuss the financial situation of the trust?

Melanie Johnson: My hon. Friend will probably be aware that all six Health Ministers had the pleasure of a visit to Yorkshire at the start of September. Indeed, the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, Central (Ms Winterton), visited the accident and emergency department at Pontefract as part of that visit. I assure my hon. Friend that 24-hour A and E services will be maintained at the Pontefract general infirmary and I assure other hon. Members who represent the area that no closures of A and E departments are proposed. We will of course consider any requests for meetings that we receive and see if we can provide any further assistance.

David Hinchliffe: In the local media last week, the finance officer for the trust gave a positive picture of the way in which it is addressing the deficit. However, will my hon. Friend examine the amount of money that the trust has spent out of the additional money allocated by the Government on securing care in the private sector locally to meet Government targets and ensure an improvement in star ratings? That is a significant factor in the problem of the deficit that the trust faces.

Melanie Johnson: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. There has been and continues to be an unprecedented level of investment in the NHS, including in Yorkshire and the Wakefield area. We are investigating whether we can get an even better deal out of the provision that has been made through purchasing in the private sector and we are always seeking to achieve a more cost-effective use of resources. I am sure that my hon. Friend will join me in welcoming all the additional investment that Yorkshire has received from this Government.

Hospital Star Ratings

Bob Russell: How many acute hospital trusts have three stars; and how many trusts have lost this status since it was introduced.

Stephen Ladyman: In 2003–04, 74 acute NHS trusts received three stars, compared with 35 in 2000–01. That demonstrates that overall trust performance has improved. Twenty trusts lost their three-star status in the most recent year's figures.

Bob Russell: Does the Minister agree that the star system is misleading the public and is grossly insulting to medical and support staff in those trusts that have gone from three stars to two stars and then to one star, given that their work rate has not diminished? The staff are working their socks off, but for other reasons such as the way in which the accounts are done or the privatised cleaning services, the star rating has been dragged down. On the clinical focus measure, one-star Colchester comes ahead of two-star Ipswich, two-star Chelmsford and three-star Southend. Given the choice, where would the Minister prefer to go and which of those hospitals provides the best clinical focus for patients?

Stephen Ladyman: The hon. Gentleman completely misunderstands the purpose of the star-rating system. It is, first and foremost, a tool to help management improve the overall standard of the hospital. Secondly, it is a tool to ensure that local people understand in a simple way what is happening in their local trust. He says that financial management and accounting are unimportant. Does not he realise that every £1 wasted means less treatment for his constituents? Every £100 or £1,000 that is not spent properly means delays to someone's operation. That is why financial stringency is important in the ratings system.

Kevin Barron: Does my hon. Friend agree that both attaining and retaining three-star status is a challenge for everybody working in the national health service? Will he congratulate both my local hospital, Rotherham general hospital, which for the third year running has retained three-star status, and the primary care trust, which has attained it for the first time? Does he agree that hard work locally and increased funding nationally is improving health care and the health of the people of Rotherham and the surrounding area?

Stephen Ladyman: I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend. As he says, attaining and keeping three-star status is difficult, and it is doubly difficult because, of course, we make the standards higher every year. The fact that the hospital had three stars last year and this year means that it is continuing to improve and my right hon. Friend should be proud of, and congratulate, all the people in the NHS who have contributed to that, as well as the Government for the funding that made it possible.

Patsy Calton: What warning did the Department of Health give hospitals seeking foundation trust status that they would not receive the £1 million achievement award under the capital bonus scheme for maintaining three-star status if they were successful in achieving foundation status? I hope that, as a reasonable Minister, he will reconsider that decision, given that it is causing particular problems for hospitals that had expected to receive that £1 million bonus.

Stephen Ladyman: The Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (Mr. Hutton), who deals with those matters, takes a sympathetic attitude and he assures me that such hospitals are receiving the £1 million.

Bob Blizzard: Will my hon. Friend look closely at the fine detail of the process for assessing performance for star status? My local hospital, the James Paget Healthcare NHS Trust, was a three-star hospital and worked out that this year, if in a particular month it had carried out fewer operations, it would have retained its three-star status. Does he agree that we should not have a system in which through some bizarre quirk a hospital can lose a star because it did more work?

Stephen Ladyman: I can give my hon. Friend the assurance that he seeks. The Commission for Healthcare Audit and Inspection—a body completely independent of Government—is responsible for both devising the mechanism for inspection in the star-rating system and carrying it out. The commission is reviewing the inspection process to ensure that some of the anomalies are removed and that there is richer and broader representation of issues about which the public have every right to know—a right that the Conservatives would take away from them.

John Baron: With regard to the Minister's answer to a previous question, he should at least accept that public confidence in the star-rating system is very low, with recent research by the Consumers Association showing that 50 per cent. of patients would not use star ratings to help them choose a hospital. Is that any wonder when star ratings tell a person whether their local hospital has long waiting lists but not about the waiting list for their particular condition and when star ratings unfairly tar all departments, whether good or bad, with the same brush? Will he recognise that stars may be a good way of measuring hotels but not complex organisations such as hospitals and will he stop fiddling with the system? Will he scrap it and replace it with clinical standards and better information, which would be far more useful to the patients?

Stephen Ladyman: I wonder how members of the public would know anything about their local hospital if we implemented a policy that took that information away from them. Of course, the Consumers Association found that a significant proportion of people would not rely only on the star-rating system to judge their local hospital; I would not either and nor would my hon. Friends. We all make judgments based on a mix of information, including local experience, family referrals, the views of local staff and the star-rating system, but at least the star-rating system gives a basis for people to make sensible decisions and obtain objective information.

Harry Barnes: In determining star status, how much weight is given to whether a dedicated stroke unit has been established in a trust? Unfortunately, the Chesterfield and North Derbyshire Royal Hospital NHS Trust has not yet established such a unit, so what action is being taken to assist, encourage and press trusts to set up such essential units?

Stephen Ladyman: First, I can tell my hon. Friend that an indicator on stroke care is part of the clinical focus score card used in assessing star ratings. Every acute trust ought to have a dedicated stroke unit. That is one of the priorities that we set under the national service framework for older people. I am sorry to hear that his local trust has not yet achieved that, but I assure him that it should be working to achieve it as soon as possible and I will certainly do everything that I can to encourage it to fulfil that objective.

Hospital-acquired Infections

Tom Brake: What progress has been made in implementing, "Winning Ways", his Department's policy on hospital infections.

John Hutton: The Department and the national health service are both actively implementing the initiatives contained in "Winning Ways", for example, through new local directors of infection control and a new hand hygiene campaign, which will help to meet our objective of reducing the incidence of MRSA—methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus—in the NHS.

Tom Brake: I thank the Minister for his response. He will be aware that isolating patients is a key tool in tackling MRSA and severe acute respiratory syndrome, yet I understand that no figures are available centrally on what isolation rooms are available in hospitals. Will he instigate a review to look at their availability nationwide to find out whether sufficient isolation facilities are available?

John Hutton: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for those comments. We obviously keep such things under careful review, and one of the things that we have been saying to the NHS is that we want more single rooms to be built into new hospital provision. That is an effective way to help the NHS and hospitals to deal with incidents of MRSA infection because, as he says, isolation is very important. We are looking carefully at all those issues.

Andrew Miller: I welcome my right hon. Friend's initiatives on this matter, but when he publishes the data that he is collecting, will he be careful not to publish a crude league table, as that could be extremely misleading to people? We need to ensure that we are comparing apples with apples. When he publishes that data, will he also include some information about the risks, putting them into perspective? One of the difficulties is helping the public to understand that we are talking about a very small risk.

John Hutton: Again, I am grateful to my hon. Friend for those comments. We have been publishing information about MRSA bloodstream infections for some time. That information is widely available. Next year, we will publish further information about, for example, glycopeptide-resistant enterococci, DNV and orthopaedic surgical site infections. That is part of a suite of information that we want to be available to the public so that they can make informed and sensible choices—very much in the way that we have been encouraged to do by others.

Archie Norman: We had a very constructive debate on this issue last week, but may I ask the Minister specifically about the patient environment action team inspections and the rate of hospital infection? My local hospital in Tunbridge Wells was recently subject to an undercover investigation by the BBC that resulted in very worrying revelations about the standards of cleanliness, and the ubiquitous Professor Hugh Pennington declared it to be the worst that he had ever seen. That hospital was declared to be acceptable by the PEAT, as were all NHS hospitals last year. Will the Minister now accept that what was acceptable to the PEATs is now no longer acceptable as a standard in an MRSA world and that those inspections need thoroughly overhauling to be much more based on taking account of the general standard of hygiene and discipline in hospitals and probably involving microbiological tests specifically for MRSA in high-risk areas?

John Hutton: Again, the hon. Gentleman is quite right: we had a constructive debate last week, and it shows the value of trying to approach these issues in that way rather than by jumping on political bandwagons and shroud-waving to raise anxieties and fears as, I am afraid, some have tried to do. I agree with him about that. I also agree that it is important that we take into account the best scientific advice and intelligence that is available to us on standards of hygiene and cleanliness in our hospitals. That is very much what the chief medical officer is trying to do and I will draw his attention to the hon. Gentleman's remarks.

General Practitioners

David Cameron: What recent representations he has received about out-of-hours cover for general practitioners; and if he will make a statement.

John Hutton: I have received representations from right hon. and hon. Members, as well as from a number of different organisations. As a result of changes agreed by GPs and by the House last year, primary care trusts now have responsibility for arranging the provision of out-of-hours services, which must comply with national quality requirements, ensuring that patients continue to have access to GP home-visiting services.

David Cameron: I thank the Minister for that reply, but is he aware that, in west Oxfordshire, out-of-hours cover will no longer be provided by a doctor, but by a paramedic? Those requiring to see a doctor may have to travel to Abingdon, which can take up to an hour. If the point of all the extra money going into the NHS was to ensure a better service, can he explain why many of my constituents seem to be facing a worse service? Does he agree that the policy will have failed if all we get are longer queues at accident and emergency departments such as at the John Radcliffe? Will he ensure that the review that the Secretary of State announced earlier looks specifically at the situation in west Oxfordshire?

John Hutton: I will certainly look at the situation in the hon. Gentleman's constituency. The advice that I have received is that the primary care trust is now providing the service itself, that local GPs are available as part of a multi-professional work force and that GP home visits are being made when that is necessary.
	I will obviously take into account the hon. Gentleman's concerns. They are widespread and we have to respond to them. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has made it very clear today how we will do that. It is part of a process of change and not a completely new invention. In 1990, the previous Conservative Government gave GPs the right to opt out of providing out-of-hours services themselves and 95 per cent. of them did that. This is therefore the completion of that process, but it is very important, as we make this final change, that the patients and public are properly reassured about the level and quality of service that will be available to them. That will be enshrined in new national legally enforceable standards and requirements, guaranteeing the access of the hon. Gentleman's constituents to the sort of service that he has just been talking about.

Richard Taylor: Can the Minister give the House any estimate of the difference in costs between the new methods of out-of-hours cover and the old methods?

John Hutton: Sadly, the information that we used to collect on the cost of out-of-hours-services was not the most robust information that we had. The latest figures that I saw showed that the cost incurred by providing out-of-hours services was about £120 million. This year, we are providing £316 million to provide effective and comprehensive out-of-hours services. It is obviously crucial from our point of view as Ministers and for our accountability to the House that we can satisfy right hon. and hon. Members that that money is being spent to provide a sensible and comprehensive service. We will discharge that responsibility, because all of us understand the importance for our families and friends of people being able to access GP services out of hours. That will continue.

Vaccination

Vincent Cable: If he will make a statement on the launch of the new five-in-one vaccine.

Melanie Johnson: On 10 August, we announced that a new combined vaccine would be introduced for babies from the end of September onwards. While the current vaccines are very safe, the new vaccine is even safer. A range of clear factual information resources for parents and health professionals has been produced to support the programme.

Vincent Cable: Can the Minister explain the terrible confusion that arose at the launch when the Department of Health leaked to the press information about the new vaccine before GP surgeries had been informed of the detail? That resulted in the leading medical centre in my constituency approaching me because hundreds of calls had been received from anxious parents. In particular, can she clear up the issue of the safety of the old stock of vaccine?

Melanie Johnson: There are no issues about safety in relation to this. As I said, the old vaccine is very safe and the new vaccine is even better for reasons that I can explain later.
	On the hon. Gentleman's point about the leak, it was not a leak. I understand that a relatively junior member of staff in the Health Protection Agency informed somebody about the proposed change and that that person then informed a national newspaper. In consequence, about a week ahead of a letter that was proposed to go out informing the service—[Interruption.] But not from the Department of Health. It was not a Department of Health leak, but something from an agency that came out without the chief medical officer's letter that was due the following week. We got the letter out as quickly as we could and staff have been informed. I understand that the new vaccination is receiving a very warm welcome from people who welcome the development of the new safer vaccine that is offered by the five-in-one.

Dental Schools

Gordon Prentice: What plans he has to establish new dental schools.

John Reid: On 16 July, I announced that we are to fund 170 extra undergraduate dental training places as part of a £368 million funding programme to revitalise NHS dentistry. Capital investment of £80 million over four years will support this expansion.

Gordon Prentice: The extra 170 training places is marvellous news, but the dental work force report told us only in July that there is currently a shortage of 1,850 dentists in England and that the figure may well double by 2011. Will the extra 170 training places close the gap or is the capacity problem so acute that we need to open new dental schools?

John Reid: May I first say that, although this does not deny the challenge on dentistry that we face in any way, the figures that my hon. Friend cites are from an older report published before we changed the system of commissioning? [Interruption.] The hon. Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne) and his colleagues laugh, but they closed two dental schools, which contributed to the problem. One reason why we have a problem is the closure of dental schools by the previous Government and a second is their introduction of a contract in 1992, although they were warned at the time that it would lead to the sort of problems that we now face.
	We have tried to remedy the situation piecemeal up until now, but that has not worked, which is why I recently announced a huge injection of cash and the introduction of 170 new places—the equivalent of two or three dental schools, or those closed by the Conservatives. I have also made a firm commitment to recruit an extra 1,000 full-time equivalent dentists in the health service by next October. There is a problem throughout the country, but the Government are taking robust action to remedy it.

Hurricane Ivan

Hilary Benn: With permission, Mr. Speaker, I wish to make a statement about Hurricane Ivan.
	Hurricane Ivan is the most powerful hurricane to hit the Caribbean for many years. It has been moving across the region for several days, causing devastation in its wake. I am sure that the House would first like to express its sadness at the loss of life, injury and damage to homes that many people have experienced.
	Initially, Hurricane Ivan was a category 3 with wind speeds of 111 to 130 mph. It was on a course towards Barbados, but veered south, passing the island by about 100 miles. That was, however, still close enough to create tidal wave surges, uproot trees, bring down power lines, rip off roofs and damage hundreds of properties. Fortunately, there was no serious flooding.
	Ivan then strengthened to a category 4 hurricane as it reached Grenada on 7 September, bringing sustained winds of 115 mph and gusts of up to 150 mph. Several hundred people from the low-lying areas of St. George's, the Grenadian capital, were evacuated, but 17 people were reported to have been killed, with 60 taken to hospital. Approximately 60,000 people were made temporarily homeless—about two thirds of the island's population. Water and electricity supplies were severely affected. Telephone lines were cut, thus making initial contact with the island very difficult. There were also problems of looting, so security personnel were deployed from Barbados, Antigua, St. Kitts and Trinidad and Tobago to assist security officials in Grenada to restore law and order.
	The hurricane caused structural damage to nearly every major building in St. George's, including the island's emergency operations centre, the Prime Minister's residence, several schools, the main hospital and a nearby prison. The immediate help requested by the Government of Grenada was for supplies of plastic sheeting, tarpaulins, tents, roofing material, building supplies, construction tools, food and batteries.
	Ever since the development of the first hurricane system to affect the region, which was Hurricane Frances, the Ministry of Defence, the Department for International Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office have been working closely together to ensure that HMS Richmond and Royal Fleet Auxiliary Wave Ruler were available, equipped and in position to provide immediate assistance. HMS Richmond and RFA Wave Ruler began helping the Grenadian relief effort at the earliest opportunity on 8 September. They provided a party of 48 sailors to clear debris and undertake the most urgent repairs, including restoring electricity supplies to the hospital. They were also able to provide medical staff, deliver medicines, offer basic air traffic control for the island and help to re-establish the island's emergency operations centre. A helicopter was made available to the Prime Minister and officials for aerial surveillance of the island to help with initial damage assessment.
	As a result of preparation for the hurricane by the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency, and of collaboration between DFID and the United States Agency for International Development, arrangements were in hand to access relief stores from USAID's Miami warehouse. The first emergency relief supplies, funded by USAID, arrived in Grenada on 9 September, including blankets, plastic sheeting, dry food and water for 20,000 people. The Governments of Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago also shipped bottled water, food, tents, generators, plastic sheeting and water bladders using coastguard vessels.
	Following a request on 10 September from the Pan American Health Organisation, the UK provided an immediate contribution of £83,000, which enabled emergency personnel to undertake disease surveillance and control, and provide urgently needed medical supplies. DFID also had an aircraft on standby in Miami to deliver 140 rolls of plastic sheeting— enough for 1,400 families—and 11,000 jerry cans. Because of conditions on the ground, the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency asked for the flight to be held back 24 hours. It arrived in Grenada on 11 September.
	The International Federation of the Red Cross has released money from its disaster relief emergency fund—DFID contributes to it annually—which exists to provide urgent help. Further assessment of needs on Grenada is now being undertaken.
	The eye of Hurricane Ivan then moved to the south of Jamaica on the night of 10 and 11 September and moved across the Cayman Islands on 12 September. Its strength varied, reaching category 4 in passing Jamaica and variable 4 to 5 on its approach to the Cayman Islands. Initial reports from Jamaica indicate that the impact has, fortunately, not been as severe as first feared, although, tragically, 15 people have reportedly lost their lives and there has been widespread damage. The Jamaican Government have declared a state of emergency and called for international assistance. Initial assessments have been undertaken by the international and regional Red Cross teams, Save the Children UK and Oxfam, and the UK has sent two humanitarian advisers to the region to advise on what help is needed. They are in Jamaica now and will report this afternoon.
	Initial reports indicate that the Cayman Islands have been severely affected. There has been extensive roof damage to many homes. As of last night, there were no reports of loss of life, but there are unconfirmed reports of injuries. Contact with the island authorities is still extremely difficult, but HMS Richmond, which is now offshore, reports that travel is very restricted, with 25 per cent. of Grand Cayman under water. The sewerage system is flooded and there has been no power since Saturday. The governor has requested immediate supplies, including plastic sheeting, cots for small children and water purification equipment. We are looking to dispatch those in the next 24 hours. The governor has also imposed a curfew. The DFID assessment team will try to get to Grand Cayman tomorrow.
	The hurricane has since moved on to Cuba. Initial reports suggest that it has affected only the far west and south-west of the island, which had been evacuated. There are, however, reports of flooding. We are ready to provide assistance if requested.
	We will continue to monitor the situation on the ground across the Caribbean. The International Red Cross intends to launch a regional appeal in the coming days, and we will contribute to it. I am sure that the thoughts of the whole House are with all those who have been affected by this terrible force of nature. We will continue to do all that we can to help them as they seek to rebuild their homes and their lives.

Alan Duncan: May I, first, say that I am delighted to have been appointed the Secretary of State's opposite number? I also thank him for giving me advance sight of his statement. I certainly look forward to working with him to argue for the best way that Britain can champion and help the poorest in the world. I look forward, too, to working with the voluntary and charitable organisations that do so much to alleviate the plight of the world's least fortunate.
	May I, briefly, also take this opportunity to thank my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow), for what Members on both sides of the House say was very sincere work over the past year? I am regularly mistaken for him, but that is, perhaps, what makes us so readily interchangeable.
	It is a rewarding part of being British that we all know that we are part of a country whose global reach and historic experience equip us to give so much help to others when they desperately need it, and now is just such a moment. A quick scan of the satellite imagery illustrates the immensity of Hurricane Ivan, with its destructive force extending far beyond the passive eye of the storm. The Secretary of State graphically described fierce winds of over 150 mph whipping through the region, leaving in their path a trail of death and despair. Thousands of homes have been damaged and scores of people have died. Eight countries are affected, five of which are members of the Commonwealth.
	The scale of the calamity is enormous, and unless Britain and the international community take immediate and effective action those countries face a miserable aftermath.
	Modern weather forecasting allowed us to see that the hurricane was building up, and I congratulate the Secretary of State and his Department on their preparatory action and on sending advisers to Jamaica at the earliest possible opportunity. It is clear from his statement that, through our efforts, we are seriously engaged with host Governments and the United States to do all that we can to help, which I applaud. What, however, is his assessment of how much his Department will spend to alleviate the effects of the hurricane? What are his priorities for the way in which the money will be spent? How will he channel it to the people who need it most? Will he give it directly to the Caribbean Governments, or will he channel it through NGOs on the ground? How does he intend to set the balance between the two? If NGOs are to be given any money, it is best that they know now, so that they know where they stand and can set about their business urgently in the knowledge that they can pay for it.
	I salute HMS Richmond and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Wave Ruler for their rapid response and superb rescue work. Their presence is a timely reminder of the vital importance of the role that British forces can play in humanitarian relief, and is a testament to the professionalism and adaptability of the men and women who serve in them. Given that hurricanes are an annual phenomenon in the Caribbean, however, will the Secretary of State reassure the House that despite the Government's proposed defence cuts the same level of Royal Navy assistance will be stationed in the Caribbean in future? My right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition delivered a speech yesterday about climate change and, indeed, the Prime Minister will refer to the topic today. My right hon. and learned Friend said that the problem is inevitable and that there is a serious need to address it. Hurricane Ivan is an acute example of that phenomenon. Will the Secretary of State refocus his Department's resources to adapt to the growing threat posed by climate change, given that the risk of such natural disasters is probably growing rather than receding?
	As with any humanitarian disaster, so far we have only seen the initial impact. I do not doubt that the Secretary of State will do all that he can to help everyone hit by the hurricane, but as the news cameras redirect their gaze, we know that the deepest need is just beginning. We all hope that when those hard-hit countries are out of the news the hard work of helping them will still continue.

Hilary Benn: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words. I extend my sincere congratulations to him, and I warmly welcome him to his new responsibilities. I genuinely wish him well in the work that he will undertake. As he will rapidly discover—if he has not done so already—it is a privilege to have the chance to speak for our respective parties on international development in the House. I join him in expressing personal appreciation for the role played by the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow), who will be missed.
	I thank the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan) for his kind words about staff from DFID, the MOD, the FCO and, indeed, personnel serving on HMS Richmond and Royal Fleet Auxiliary Wave Ruler for the part that they have played. Our disaster response team, which is part of DFID's conflict and humanitarian affairs department, has been tracking the hurricane for some time, and the fact that I have been able to report to the House the steps that we have already taken is a testament to that preparation. We are proud to have played our part, but the hon. Gentleman is right that much more needs to be done. I cannot at this stage tell him the total spend in response to the hurricane, because that will depend on the assessment of need. Our immediate priority is to deal with the most urgent and pressing problems, and I set out in my statement the steps that we have already taken to respond to the needs communicated to us by people with whom we have been in contact, particularly on Grenada and the Cayman Islands, and by sailors and other personnel serving on HMS Richmond. That assistance will be used to support the Governments of the countries affected and at the same time—this will become more apparent when the Red Cross regional appeal is shortly launched—we will work, as we do wherever possible, through relief agencies on the ground, because they have the capacity. The best thing that we can do is use the resources that I am prepared to make available through them, thus ensuring that they can undertake the work that is required.
	I agree that the presence of HMS Richmond has proved extremely important. It has played a valuable role and shows the continuing importance of that presence to deal with such disasters.
	The hon. Gentleman is right to say that there have been a large number of hurricanes this year. Nobody knows for sure whether this is a manifestation of climate change, but he rightly draws attention to the challenge, and the world must respond to it. That is the point that the Prime Minister will make in his speech today. It is often the very poorest people who suffer most from the impact of climate change. We are talking today about flooding in the Caribbean, but only a short time ago there was flooding in Bangladesh, a country uniquely vulnerable to a rise in the water level because so many people live so close to sea level. The UK has made it clear that we intend to make climate change a priority for our G8 presidency next year.
	The other truth, which I am sure the hon. Gentleman would recognise, is that unless in the long term we get an agreement that involves action by all the countries of the world, including developing countries and including some, such as China, which are in the process of becoming big emitters, we will never solve the problem.
	On the final point that the hon. Gentleman makes about the long term, I recognise that although the cameras have moved on, the process of reconstruction will continue. I can tell the House that the Caribbean Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund have concessionary lending facilities that are designed to help countries recover from disasters of this sort. We will be looking at the assessments that are made by our own people, we will be responding to the appeals made by the Red Cross and others, and particularly in relation to Grenada, where we have a small programme of technical assistance, I will be looking at how we might refocus that to support the country to recover.

Tom Brake: I thank the Secretary of State for providing an advance copy of the statement, and echo the condolences and sympathies that he expressed to people affected by the tragedy. I also pay tribute to the role that British forces are playing in the region. Their presence underlines the need for long-term engagement in that area.
	I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow), who was a real friend of international development. I hope that his successor, the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan), will prove to be so too, and I wish him well in that position.
	It is appropriate that the Government's response has been generous and immediate. I should like to ask the Secretary of State about the other action that the Government intend to take. What contacts have we had with other leading Commonwealth countries to see what role they could play? On the Government's position in relation to short-term commitment in the form of humanitarian aid and, just as important, in relation to their longer-term commitment to the region, particularly the need to rebuild the infrastructure, some details about Government plans would be appreciated.
	Climate change has been mentioned. Will the Secretary of State raise the matter with the Prime Minister and ask him to raise it in due course with President Bush? The hurricane is the most recent and forceful evidence of climate change in a region close to the United States.
	Finally, with reference to Grenada, could the Secretary of State set out what assistance Grenada has asked for, and whether the UK Government would be willing to provide people to assist on the ground? I understand that the problem is not necessarily the quantity of aid available, but getting it out reliably and safely to the people who need it. Grenada, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands are all facing a tragedy. I am sure that if the Secretary of State chooses to push Britain's role even harder and faster in the region, he will receive support from all parts of the House.

Hilary Benn: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words about those who have worked so hard to respond to the crisis. On his first point about the Commonwealth, as I said, a number of Commonwealth countries have already responded—the provision of practical support is, of course, a natural inclination, not least among neighbours and friends.
	On the hon. Gentleman's second point about long-term plans, as I indicated to the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton, we must make an assessment based on priorities and the extent to which countries can help themselves. For instance, the Cayman Islands has suffered grievously, and we are providing immediate humanitarian assistance, but it has a relatively high GDP, and its need for long-term support will be different from that of Grenada or, indeed, Jamaica, which is why we must reflect on relative need in deciding how to support long-term reconstruction. We will examine the provision of further assistance, including a response to the Red Cross appeal.
	On climate change, the hon. Gentleman knows that we have already raised that point internationally, including making clear our wish that the United States should sign up to the Kyoto protocol, but the United States Administration are not persuaded. We have been strong on both the targets that we have set ourselves in the United Kingdom and pressing the rest of the world to recognise that climate change is a challenge that we must do something about.

Diane Abbott: The whole House is grateful to the Secretary of State for his prompt oral statement. He knows that millions of British residents, who have either friends or family in those countries, have watched the course of the hurricane with extreme anxiety hour by hour. Obviously, the Government must wait for a detailed assessment of need before taking steps, but we may need to examine special immigration arrangements for the residents of Grenada. Flexibility was introduced after the volcano in Montserrat, and many Grenadian families have elderly relatives who have nowhere to live. Will the Secretary of State consider whether his officials can brief Grenadian and Jamaican people who are over here and who want up-to-date information?
	The real problem for those countries is not the provision of immediate humanitarian aid or even rebuilding infrastructure, but the savage blow that the hurricane has dealt to agriculture and tourism, which are the pillars of their economies. They need serious long-term help to rebuild and restructure their economies, because if we leave an economic vacuum in Grenada and Jamaica, the drug trade will move into it. We may need to examine large-scale, sustained economic advice and help so that those societies can remain stable and secure.

Hilary Benn: I thank my hon. Friend for her remarks, and I know that she takes a close interest in the matter. In addition to flights that have left Grenada, which removed people who were there on holiday, I understand that the one flight in carried friends and relatives who want to provide assistance. We will put my statement and other information on to the Department for International Development website, and I am happy to discuss other ideas that my hon. Friend and other hon. Members may have about how those communities that are particularly concerned can be kept in touch with events. I am happy to examine any proposals on reassuring people or telling people how they can provide practical assistance.
	I undertake to raise my hon. Friend's point about arrangements for those who might want to bring relatives over to care for them with my right hon. Friends the Home Secretary and the Foreign Secretary. I do not know the answer, but I undertake to look into the matter and to ensure that either my right hon. Friends or I reply to my hon. Friend on that point.
	Finally, my hon. Friend made a powerful point about the hurricane's possible long-term impact. The international community's response includes the Caribbean Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Community. Once we have dealt with the immediate crisis, on which we are focused today, particularly in Grand Cayman, where no one has been able to go ashore, it is essential that we examine supporting those countries in recovering from that terrible catastrophe.

Tony Baldry: When climatic disasters, whether hurricanes in the Caribbean or flooding in Bangladesh, occur, the poorest suffer most, are most vulnerable and are least able to cope with the aftershocks. Britain's presidency of the G8 will be subject to one clear test: can the Prime Minister persuade the United States to sign up to the Kyoto protocol? It is no good the Prime Minister making further speeches unless some action occurs.
	Will the Secretary of State confirm that because the Cayman Islands is an overseas territory, it has a particular claim under international development legislation on the first slice of the overseas development budget? Will he estimate the assistance that will specifically go to the Cayman Islands under that claim?

Hilary Benn: The hon. Gentleman is right about the impact of climate change and the importance of dealing with it. He knows the consistent line that the Government have taken in expressing the hope that the United States Administration will sign up to the Kyoto protocol. In the end, it is for the US Administration to take that decision—we hope that they will—but so far they remain unpersuaded, whether it is by the United Kingdom or the other countries that have signed up and have given the same advice.
	The hon. Gentleman is right about the Cayman Islands' particular status as an overseas territory, for which we therefore have a special responsibility. As I said, we are exercising that responsibility by providing immediate assistance. We must talk to the Governor and to the Cayman Islands Administration about how we can balance further support with, as I indicated earlier, a recognition that the Cayman Islands is a well-off overseas territory and an assessment of the extent to which it can contribute from its own resources.

Hugh Bayley: Our relationship with the Caribbean goes back hundreds of years to a time before the Union between England and Scotland and our presence in Canada, Australia or New Zealand. Members of my wife's family who live in the Caribbean have told me about the enormously high regard in which Britain is held, because of the speed with which we have responded to previous disasters, and that memory goes back years. I urge the Secretary of State to recognise that speed is everything. It is extremely important that this country retains a naval presence in the Caribbean in order to respond at times such as this.

Hilary Benn: Speed is, indeed, of the essence. We have already seen the benefit of that naval presence, which has been the main means by which we have been able to provide assistance. I hope that the hon. Gentleman and the House feel that our actions, which I described earlier, demonstrate not only that we were tracking the hurricane and were prepared, but that we moved as quickly as could reasonably be expected in the circumstances, bearing it in mind that it is difficult to get in while the hurricane is still blowing.
	I pay tribute to the staff at DFID. I am continually and genuinely impressed by the effectiveness with which they go about their job, the information that they have at their disposal and the assiduity with which they deal with crises. It is principally because of their efforts that I can report to the House that we have taken steps, but we must do more.

Jenny Tonge: I echo other hon. Members' remarks about putting real pressure on the United States of America to sign up to the Kyoto agreement. It is no good doing everything that America wants if America does not act in the interests of the whole world in return.
	I want to raise the question of the general hospital in St. George's, Grenada. One of my constituents, Dr. Gary Symons, set up the intensive care unit, which has just been completed, in that hospital. Yesterday, he reported to me that although the hospital has its own generator, it has medical and surgical supplies for one more week only. Will the Secretary of State reassure us that it will get the supplies that it needs immediately?

Hilary Benn: The whole House is agreed on Kyoto. I thank the hon. Lady for her report on the availability of medical supplies. As she will know, HMS Richmond brought supplies on to the island as part of its initial response. I undertake to find out from my officials how long those supplies are likely to last, and then I will respond to the hon. Lady on what can be done to ensure their continuity over the coming weeks.

Tony Lloyd: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on making this early statement and on the prompt action taken by his Department and our armed forces. The response of our armed forces in the Caribbean is absolutely vital. In that context, can he comment on the security and communications situations in places—Grenada, Jamaica and, perhaps with less certainty, the Cayman Islands—where we have responsibility?
	If the hurricane turns towards Mexico, as still seems to be a possibility, will our armed forces be available to undertake the same kind of work, particularly on communications, in the fragile communities on the Mexican gulf coast?

Hilary Benn: I thank my hon. Friend for his kind words. On communications, the airports in Grenada and Kingston are open. The airport on Grand Cayman—the other two Cayman islands have been evacuated in anticipation of the arrival of the hurricane, and the entire population is on Grand Cayman—is open for light aircraft, and it is hoped in due course to make it available for larger relief aircraft. One way or another, everyone will do all that they can to get supplies in by that means. As I said, communications remain particularly difficult on Grand Cayman.
	On security, there has been some looting in Grenada. Security forces from neighbouring countries have come to help, and there is a curfew. Some looting has taken place in Jamaica, with unconfirmed reports of three people having been killed as a result of the violence. There have been concerns about law and order in the Cayman Islands, where a curfew has been imposed. I hope that that gives my hon. Friend the information that he needs.
	On Mexico, the honest truth is that we will need to identify the continuing requirements in providing support to the countries in the Caribbean for which we have a particular responsibility. At the moment, the immediate priority for HMS Richmond is to provide support to the Cayman Islands.

Cheryl Gillan: To continue on that theme, this morning my office received a phone call from a constituent who is extremely worried about his family on Grand Cayman but is unable to contact them. I understand that no electricity is available and that mobile phones have gone down. Can the Secretary of State give us some idea of how communications can be secured on the island and whether HMS Richmond will do that as a matter of priority? Is there a helpline that concerned people in this country can ring, either at the Foreign Office or in his Department, to enable contact to be made swiftly?
	When the assessment teams have gone into Grand Cayman, how swiftly will the Secretary of State be able to react to the demands of that community?

Hilary Benn: There has been some communication, albeit intermittent, with the governor of Grand Cayman. As the hon. Lady suggests, re-establishing communications will be a priority for HMS Richmond and the team that it hopes to send ashore as soon as possible. As intermittent telephone conversations have been the only means of talking to those on the island, there is no way in which relatives, who are understandably deeply concerned, can make those links. That is why it is very important that communication be re-established as soon as possible. We are considering how to get in as quickly as possible—I hope that it will be within the next 24 hours—the initial relief supplies for which we have been asked. That is our immediate priority.
	I shall reflect on the hon. Lady's point about sources of information and contact for concerned relatives. I recognise that concern, but at the moment we are having real difficulty in talking to people on the island ourselves.

Chris Bryant: Bearing in mind the United Kingdom's historic association with many of the countries in the region, it is important that we play a vital role in providing health and assistance. However, given that many other countries in the European Union have historic ties with the Caribbean, how much co-ordination has there been with our European friends who have relations with the Caribbean? In particular, has Commissioner Nielson been involved in co-ordination or co-operation between member states?

Hilary Benn: My hon. Friend raises an important point. So far, our priority has been to do everything that we can to help. Now that we have provided that immediate response—although getting the help that is needed to Grand Cayman remains the urgent priority—I intend to find out about the response from other European countries. The Red Cross appeal is open to any other countries, including EU member states, that wish to give money. That is intended to help agencies with the capacity to get on to the ground as soon as possible, which is, historically, the most effective way of providing help. That is how we work in principle, because it gets relief there by the quickest route.

Patrick Cormack: I congratulate the Secretary of State on his exemplary attitude and approach. Will he build on that by keeping the House informed of the situation? If there is significant further information, will he make a written statement on Thursday; and when we come back in October, can we have at least a detailed written statement outlining precisely what has been done, especially with regard to those territories for which we have a political responsibility?

Hilary Benn: I am happy to do both those things, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his suggestion.

David Heath: In recent days, I have been in contact with my constituent, Mr. Gerry Copsey, who runs a company called Just Grenada and has been desperately working with other tour operators and airlines to evacuate people from Grenada. He tells me that there are two overriding problems there: the breakdown of law and order and lack of policing; and the lack of prefabricated housing. Is the Secretary of State satisfied that the welcome support from troops from Barbados and Trinidad is sufficient to restore governmental systems and policing on the island; and is there scope for providing a greater supply of prefabricated housing so that people can get back into solid houses, rather than tents, at the earliest opportunity?

Hilary Benn: I am grateful for the information that the hon. Gentleman's constituent has provided. I do not know whether the steps taken with the assistance of those countries have dealt with the problem that was identified, but I can tell him that the response from neighbouring countries and islands is being led by Trinidad and Tobago. As I said, there is a curfew in Grenada. The authorities will no doubt consider what further steps are needed to ensure the peace and stability that are the building blocks of any progress.
	I am sure that housing is one of the issues that will be considered in further assessments of what can be done in the medium term, but the hon. Gentleman will understand that the priority has been to ensure that people who had the roofs blown off their houses have sheeting or tarpaulin to put over them so that they at least get shelter from the rain; that is what we are working towards.

Humfrey Malins: I, too, thank the Secretary of State for his full and helpful statement. Will he say a little more about climate change, particularly as it may affect this country? In other words—I hope this is not a naive question—could this awful hurricane perhaps be an indication that we in this country should brace ourselves against possible changes in climate and weather patterns that may affect us as well as other parts of the world?

Hilary Benn: I understand why the hon. Gentleman raises that point, but I am not in a position to forecast the potential impact of climate change on this country. That is beyond my responsibilities and, indeed, my knowledge of meteorology.

John Bercow: Surely not.

Hilary Benn: Definitely so. Many people say that we are experiencing increasingly frequent severe weather patterns, and that is understandably generating a debate about whether it is a consequence of climate change. Whether or not that is so, we can see the impact that increasing CO2 emissions are having. The weight of scientific opinion is clear, and we need to respond. It will be incumbent on all countries, including the UK, to be in a position to prepare themselves in case such eventualities affect them.

Sydney Chapman: The Secretary of State has graphically described the death, damage and destruction that was wreaked by a hurricane, which could perhaps be most aptly called Ivan the Terrible. As he said, it is the worst one for some years. Given that nearly every hon. Member has mentioned global warming and climate change in the context of such natural disasters, will he assure the House that scientific research is being conducted nationally, internationally or both? If a link can be shown, perhaps that will be the greatest fillip for hon. Members of all parties who want the Kyoto protocol to be adhered to and mankind to take urgent and immediate action. We are all responsible for wrecking, probably irreversibly, mother earth's fragile ecosystem.

Hilary Benn: The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point, not least about the threat of the process of change to us all, wherever we live in the world. As he knows, a great deal of scientific research is being undertaken. The Government's chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, has spoken about that forcefully. However, Governments and politicians are also required to act. Frankly, that is the biggest challenge that the world faces.

Henry Bellingham: As the Secretary of State knows, Britain has a proud tradition of helping the residents of all the Caribbean islands when natural disasters occur. As my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) pointed out, we have an extra special obligation to British overseas territories. The Secretary of State mentioned that the Caymans constitute a wealthy overseas territory, but its residents are nevertheless proud British subjects. Surely that should never be forgotten.

Hilary Benn: I agree entirely. That is why we are trying to fulfil our particular responsibility to the Cayman Islands in the ways I have described, and why we shall continue to do that.

Representation of the People (Ballot Papers)

Meg Munn: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision about the order of names on ballot papers used in elections where more than one candidate is to be elected; and for connected purposes.
	In all elections in the United Kingdom, the names of candidates are currently listed on the ballot paper in alphabetical order using the surname. When the election concerns parties, such as in the European elections, they are also listed alphabetically. Consequently, someone with the surname "Blair" would find themselves listed above someone with the surname "Howard", or, indeed, Kennedy. The Ant Liberation party, should such a party exist, would appear above the Bring-Back-Doctor-Who party or the Flat Earth party.
	That does not seem surprising, as it is the case in many areas of life. At school, our registers were listed alphabetically and when hon. Members vote in this place, our names are recorded in Hansard alphabetically by surname. So why should that easily administered and well understood part of the electoral process change?
	The ballot paper is fundamental to our democracy. No candidate or party should receive advantage from the ballot paper. If the political process is not fair and equitable to all candidates, it strikes at the heart at our system of democracy. In June 2003, the Electoral Commission produced a report entitled "Ballot Paper Design", which covered a range of issues regarding ballot papers, including alphabetical listing of candidates. After extensive consultation, it considered whether alphabetical discrimination exists: whether candidates with surnames towards the end of the alphabet are less likely to be elected because their names appear lower down the ballot paper, and whether there was evidence that electors were more inclined to vote for those nearer the top of the ballot paper for no reason other than reading those names first.
	In the consultation process, the Electoral Commission received little evidence to suggest that, in single-vacancy elections, there is any bias towards those higher up the ballot paper. An analysis of the 2001 election showed an almost equal split between the positions on the ballot paper in which the winning candidates were placed.
	My concern arises not from single-vacancy elections but from those where more than one candidate are elected. This year, for example, several local authority councils, such as my authority of Sheffield, were elected on new ward boundaries. That necessitated the election of all members of the council, whereas normally one third of the council is elected. In talking to hon. Members, I found that many provided anecdotal evidence of discrimination which they believed affected candidates placed lower down the ballot paper. Although in many circumstances that is not sufficient to affect the outcome of the election, in some it might.
	The Electoral Commission shares that concern and cites academic research analysing the London borough elections in 1994 and the English shire district elections in 1995. The research showed that a smaller proportion of ballots was cast for candidates in the middle or at the bottom of the alphabetical order. It also showed that, among voters who cast all the available votes for one party's candidates, there was a marked bias towards those listed higher in the alphabetical order. Several councils also provided evidence that, when ballot papers had 12 or more candidates for three seats, a significant number of voters used only one or two votes—appearing not to find the third from the favoured party on the ballot paper.
	Other factors, such as incumbency, influence the outcome of elections but research that included those factors still demonstrates a bias towards those with names at the start of the alphabet.
	There is little evidence that parties or candidates seek to exploit the alphabetical listing by changing their surnames. For example, we have yet to see the appearance of a Robert Aardvark-Silk. I doubt that, if I sought election in a multi-vacancy election, I would choose to use my husband's name to bump me up the ballot paper from "M" to "B"—although, as he is called Bates, I would find myself above many famous names—Blair, Blunkett and Brown, to name but three.
	Australia, which uses a randomised system for ballot papers, has experience of people seeking advantage. A famous example is the 1937 Senate election in New South Wales, when four candidates were elected with the names Armour, Armstrong, Arnold and Ashley.
	In the case of the use of party lists, such as in the European elections, a campaigning organisation could well try to highlight its cause by adopting a name beginning with "A", in the way some companies do to secure first listing in the "Yellow Pages" telephone directory. A recent article in the Financial Times highlighted concerns that, under the alphabetical system, the British National party usually appears at the top of the list.
	Residents of London know that, as part of mayoral elections, they are sent a booklet that includes the manifestos of all the candidates. After the first mayoral election, some candidates complained that the public were likely to read only the first few manifestos, and that that gave an advantage to those with names higher up the alphabet. For the election held earlier this year, a randomised system was adopted, with lots being drawn and candidates' manifestos appearing in the booklet in the order in which they had been drawn. However, the practice of listing candidates on the ballot paper in alphabetical order remained.
	Many countries list candidates alphabetically on their ballot papers, but a research project on voting systems, the Epic project, found 16 countries that use randomisation for elections to their first Chamber, including Australia, Belgium and Bosnia and Herzegovina. I have not made a detailed study of the different forms of randomisation that are used. However, in Australia, there is a double randomisation system, whereby all candidates are first randomly allocated a number and then the numbers are drawn again. That determines the outcome on the ballot paper. The process is not unduly bureaucratic and burdensome on returning officers and, in my view, would not therefore be in any way detrimental to the process. I understand that drawing lots for the publication of manifestos for the London mayoral election took place openly and was seen to be satisfactory.
	The Electoral Commission, in its report on ballot paper design, goes on to suggest that party candidates could be grouped together and that that would assist both electors and counting clerks. That would be achieved by substituting party for candidate in the first draw and then by further randomisation of the candidates' names in the party block.
	I am not seeking to add to our view of the world another form of discrimination—that of alphabetism—although my experience of talking to hon. Members whose name begins with "W", a number of whom are in the Chamber today, is that they can tell of many instances in which they feel that their position in the alphabet has affected them. I am seeking to ensure that our electoral system should address the concern that, in elections in which more than one candidate is to be elected, there should be no possibility that having a name beginning with a letter near the beginning of the alphabet could confer an advantage.
	Pamela Gordon, the Electoral Commissioner who chaired the review of ballot paper design, has stated:
	"The design of ballot papers and nomination of candidates are two crucial areas of election administration. The public's ability to access democracy is dependent on their effectiveness."
	The randomisation of names through a system similar to that used in Australia would not be cumbersome or difficult to understand. It would provide the reassurance that accidents of birth—or, indeed, marriage—are not influencing our democratic process and affecting the outcome of elections. 
	Question put and agreed to.
	Bill ordered to be brought in by Ms Meg Munn, Mr. Andrew Mackay, Mr. Andy Reed, Jonathan Shaw, Mr. Barry Sheerman, Dr. Alan Whitehead, Brian White and Mr. Phil Willis.

Representation Of The People (Ballot Papers)

Ms Meg Munn accordingly presented a Bill to make provision about the order of names on ballot papers used in elections where more than one candidate is to be elected; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 15 October, and to be printed [Bill 152].

Opposition Day
	 — 
	[17th Allotted Day]

Higher Education

Mr. Speaker: I inform the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

Phil Willis: I beg to move,
	That this House notes with regret the emerging consequences of the passage of the Higher Education Act 2004; believes that fees and expanding student debt create significant disincentives for those considering university entry, particularly from less well-off backgrounds; congratulates the efforts of those in the House of Lords who achieved significant concessions during the passage of the Higher Education Bill, particularly for part-time students; regrets that Her Majesty's Official Opposition has completely ignored the needs of part-time students in its new policy; notes that Conservative proposals ask students to pay for the abolition of tuition fees through higher interest payments on their loans, leaving them no better off; further notes the conclusion of the Institute of Fiscal Studies and others that Conservative proposals penalise the poor in order to subsidise the rich; notes the recent Times Higher Education Supplement/Opinion Panel Research opinion poll of students which finds that 47 per cent. support the Liberal Democrats, 20 per cent. support Labour and 23 per cent. are backing the Conservatives; and therefore calls for the immediate abolition of all tuition fees, the re-introduction of maintenance grants of up to £2,000 for students from low-income homes, and the development of a higher education system which brings together universities, further education and e-learning, opens up routes to vocational and technical as well as academic qualifications, and makes it easier for those who wish to study part-time.
	It is a pleasure to speak to a packed House on the important issue of higher education. I should like to begin by welcoming the Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education, the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Dr. Howells), to the Front Bench in his new role. When I first came into the House, he was the Minister for Lifelong Learning, and was incredibly courteous to those of us who were starting our careers here at the time. We remember that, and thank him for it. If today's announcement by the Secretary of State for Education and Skills on post-result applications to higher education is a measure of the Minister's immediate influence, we welcome that, too. The Schwartz committee's recommendations, which have been so swiftly accepted by the Secretary of State, represent an important step towards encouraging university applications from the less traditional groups.
	Will the Minister use his influence to dovetail the proposals of the Schwartz committee with the forthcoming proposals by Mike Tomlinson? It is crucial that those two strands of policy development sit together. Schwartz talks almost exclusively of post-A2 level entry into higher education, while Tomlinson shifts the emphasis to four-level diploma entry, with an emphasis on vocational as well as academic credits. I see that the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) is in his place, and I wonder whether this is an issue that the Education and Skills Committee could also look at. It would be sad if two separate silos, each of which placed an emphasis on trying to get under-represented groups into higher education and to further their education, could not come together. Schools, colleges and universities need a single, integrated entry system, and there is a danger, if we adopt the Schwartz system, that we might prejudice what is proposed later by Tomlinson. I hope that the Minister will take that on board.
	We wish the Minister well, however. When I looked at the Guardian Unlimited website this morning, a most unusual fact was revealed to me: the Minister was the Liberal Democrat spokesperson on industrial development between 1995 and 1997! That was a fact that I did not know, but I am sure that the Minister will reap huge rewards from having represented us on that vital brief during those two years.
	Such surprises are the magic of the House of Commons, but few surprises can rival the announcement last week that the Conservatives at last have a policy on higher education. It has only been six years since the passing of the Teaching and Higher Education Act in 1998, three years since the Prime Minister launched his review, two years since the White Paper was published, one year since the current legislation was published and three months since it received Royal Assent. However, we welcome their announcement.
	I have to confess that I was as nervous as a schoolboy with his first top-shelf magazine when I read the Conservatives' policy. Would it live up to expectations? That was the key question. I am delighted that the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) has now joined his colleagues on the Front Bench, because it was he who stung me in Committee when I challenged him to tell me when the Conservatives would reveal their plans for higher education. He boldly replied:
	"I can assure him that when we publish our policy he will be immensely jealous of it, as it will be much more attractive than the one that either he or the Government propose."—[Official Report, Standing Committee H, 24 February 2004; c. 252.]

Hon. Members: Hear, hear!

Phil Willis: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has hon. Members' support. However, the initial verdict on his party's policy has not exactly been encouraging.
	Professor Nicholas Barr of the London School of Economics, who is regarded as one of the leading international experts in student finance, has said of the Conservatives' policy that it is
	"deeply regressive, benefiting merchant bankers at the expense of nurses and teachers".

Tim Collins: Does the hon. Gentleman also believe what Professor Barr says about Liberal Democrat policy, which he utterly condemns?

Phil Willis: I am quite sure that when the hon. Gentleman has the opportunity to speak, he will comment on the Liberal Democrats' policy, but I am talking about his party's six-year plans for higher education.
	The National Union of Students has described the Conservatives' policy as
	"a regressive response to the funding crisis in higher education",
	and the Association of University Teachers has said that it "could prove a disaster" and that it is "highly regressive". NATFHE has commented:
	"This elitist policy would reverse efforts to widen participation in higher education."
	Frankly, there is not much to be jealous of, so far.
	To be fair to the Conservatives, however, despite the dodgy use of figures, the lack of published sources in their report and the misleading use of the Government's explanatory notes to the Bill, the proposals deserve, and are getting, detailed consideration. I wish to help them in that regard today. Perhaps the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Collins) could explain why, when using the range of figures from the explanatory notes, he took the lowest figure for fee income and the highest for savings from loan subsidies. That is hardly the research on which to base a credible policy after seven years.
	But surely the Conservatives' glaring, unforgivable omission of any mention of part-time students was not a result of sloppy research. Given that 50 per cent. of university students study part-time, that omission is more than a minor oversight. I well remember the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell saying in Committee that
	"the absence of greater focus on part-time studies in the White Paper, the absence of a part-time dimension to the Bill, and some of the shortcomings that the Bill represents for the part-time sector are greatly to be regretted."—[Official Report, Standing Committee H, 2 March 2004; c. 428.]
	Those were nothing more than crocodile tears, because there is nothing in the Conservatives' proposals for part-timers. Indeed, had it not been for the assiduous work of my noble Friend in another place, Baroness Sharp, who persuaded the Government to include some provision for part-timers and to ensure that the Office for Fair Access—OFFA—considered access arrangements for part-time students within university plans, I doubt whether the Government would have acted at all.
	May I ask the Minister, who I know values part-time study greatly, whether he will extend the proposed review of funding at Birkbeck and the Open university to all mainstream universities, rather than just those two institutions?
	Will he guarantee that any assistance rightly offered to Birkbeck and the Open university will be offered to mainstream universities, too? That is a relatively small commitment, but it would send out a strong signal to part-time students and to mainstream universities that that mode of study is valued and supported. The failure of the Conservatives to address that and other key issues means that they have missed a glorious opportunity to cash in on disillusionment with Government policy and to make an important contribution to the debate.
	The Higher Education Act 2004 represents a significant departure for British higher education. It enshrines a system in which access depends on ability to pay, not on ability to learn, and on tolerance of £30,000-plus debts. It is extraordinary and irresponsible for Labour Ministers to admit that students will graduate with significant debts, and to boast that students will just have to live with that, at a time when the debt culture in our society is viewed as dangerous and unsustainable.

Alan Whitehead: On the close examination of Opposition policies on higher education and the question of student fees, will the hon. Gentleman reflect on whether a such a policy can be described as providing free higher education when proposals exist to impose commercial repayment rates for student loans at 2 per cent. above base rate, I believe? Does he consider that to be a free higher education system?

Phil Willis: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point, because that is the crux of the Conservative party's policy. The short answer to his question is absolutely not. What is more pernicious is that to get those funds into universities, that commercial rate of interest is charged on the poorer students, who must pay the greatest amount, because they must borrow the most. That is a classic sheriff of Nottingham policy, imposed by the Conservatives.

Simon Hughes: Before my hon. Friend moves off student debt and the prospect of debt, has he seen the figures that came to me in a parliamentary answer just before the summer, which showed that for the first time in the past 10 years, there was a drop in the percentage of people across Greater London going on to university? That fall was evident in two thirds of education authorities. Does he have any explanation as to why, suddenly, in London, not only are we not moving towards the Government's target but away from it?

Phil Willis: I thank my hon. Friend for his question. It is interesting that in some of the poorest communities in places such as Barking, Islington and particularly Lambeth—which I know because I live there—in which fewer than 20 per cent. of students now go on to higher education in a city that offers the widest range of higher education institutions, we are seeing such an alarming drop. For Ministers to say that that is nothing to do with tuition fees and top-up fees is fatuous.
	The Liberal Democrats consistently argued that tuition fees and top-up fees would be a significant disincentive to potential students, particularly those from less affluent backgrounds, and not simply a disincentive to go to university, but, crucially, a disincentive to attend the top universities. That was the clear and categorical conclusion of the Government's research, commissioned from Professor Claire Callender of South Bank university. The findings were given additional impact by the report, "The Missing 3,000" published by the Sutton Trust in August, which concludes:
	"While 45 per cent. of independent school students who obtained the equivalent of an A and two Bs go to a leading university, only 26 per cent. of state school students achieving the same grades do so."
	Are Ministers saying that that is not partly due to debt and the fear of debt? If so, they are burying their heads in the sand.

Anne Campbell: The hon. Gentleman will recall that, during the Committee stage of the Higher Education Bill, he and I had quite a few debates about the factors that were influential in determining whether students go to university. Does he agree that there is a perception that it is more expensive to go to Oxford and Cambridge than to many other universities? That is blatantly untrue; in fact, the reverse is true. The level of subsidy and number of bursaries available at Cambridge university make it a much cheaper university for those who have the right qualifications.

Phil Willis: The hon. Lady is right that we have debated these issues regularly. Does she think that adding a £3,000 a year top-up fee creates a fair access policy? I do not care how much is given at the other end. If £3,000 is charged up front, my goodness, let us not pretend that students are getting a different, better provision.

Anne Campbell: rose—

Phil Willis: Our research shows that the proportion of English school leavers applying to go to university has fallen—

Anne Campbell: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman did not intend to mislead the House, but the £3,000 is not paid up front, and it would be helpful if he were to withdraw that last statement.

Phil Willis: I will gladly withdraw it. The fact is that, although the student who is charged £3,000 does not have to pay it on that day, it is still added to their account. Whether it is paid on the first day, or at the end of three years, when the debt is £9,000, is irrelevant. Let us remember that a Labour Government in 1998 introduced tuition fees, having said that they would not do so in their 1997 manifesto, and a Labour Government introduced top-up fees, having said that they would not do so, and having legislated against it in 2001. Let us not have crocodile tears from Labour Back Benchers about those fees.
	Our research shows that the proportion of English school leavers applying to go to university has fallen in each of the past two years. According to Universities and Colleges Admissions Service figures, if the number of 18 to 20-year-old applicants in England had kept pace with demographic trends, an additional 12,250 would have opted to go to university over the past two years, but they have not done so. The Government can hardly claim that six years of tuition fees, and the prospect of top-up fees, have been a triumph for social inclusion.
	But what are the alternatives? Will either the Liberal Democrat or Conservative proposals expand educational opportunities for less affluent and under-represented groups? As opposition parties, we have a duty not just to criticise but to propose credible alternatives. The Liberal Democrats not only proposed but published our higher education proposals in "Quality, Diversity and Choice". Copies of our documents were sent to Ministers for perusal in advance of debate on the Higher Education Bill, and the costings were analysed and verified not only by the Government but by the Higher Education Policy Institute as correct. Hon. Members might disagree with our proposals on where we would raise our money, and where we would spend it, but the Liberal Democrats are the only party that guarantees students that they will not pay tuition fees or top-up fees and that poorer students will get grants, which will be paid for out of progressive taxation—a philosophy and a concept that the Labour party has abandoned totally as it faces the 21st century.
	The Conservatives, however, have totally failed to meet the test of credibility. The analysis of their proposals by the Institute for Fiscal Studies is devastating. As was pointed out earlier in relation to the intervention of the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead), the poorest 30 per cent. of students, who are entitled to a full grant and bursaries under the Government scheme, will pay 25 per cent. more in loan repayments under the Tories' proposals. The Higher Education Policy Institute confirms the IFS view that women, those taking career breaks, for whatever reason, and those in low-income employment, particularly in the public sector, would be particularly disadvantaged. Significant numbers of students will never pay off their debts, because the interest on them will rack up to a point at which it will be impossible to pay them off.
	The proposals include no calculation of how that debt will be written off. Students taking longer courses in medicine, for instance—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell is trying to intervene from a sedentary position. A tiny figure is included in the Conservative proposals, but they include no calculation of the number of students who might not repay their debts. They are, in fact, based on the Labour party's proposals—and for all their faults, those involve a simple tax on the outstanding amount which will depend on a person's income. No real interest is added.
	My fear, and that of my party, is that those taking longer courses such as medicine, dentistry and architecture—who are already grossly disadvantaged by the Government's proposals—would find their debts soaring as commercial interest rates were added to loans taken out in the first years of their studies. Or is the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell saying that loans taken out by medical students during the first three years will be exempt from interest until those people start earning more than £15,000? Perhaps that could be clarified later.
	In short, the Conservatives are asking the poorest to pay extra so that the rich will not have to pay any fees. That is a classic Conservative policy: tax the poor to give to the rich.
	What about investment? Will the Conservative proposals mean extra investment for our universities?

Chris Grayling: More than yours do.

Phil Willis: I shall have to have a little drink of water, because I am getting excited.

John Bercow: The hon. Gentleman is demonstrating very eloquently how sharply to the left of the Government his party stands on these matters. Given the huge funding gap that undeniably exists in higher education, and his and his party's stated opposition to all student payment, can he explain how he would tackle the very real problem of recruitment and retention of the highest quality staff, and how he would stop the brain drain of high-quality academics to the United States?

Phil Willis: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is always incredibly courteous in his interventions. I have long enjoyed debating with him.
	Let me give a simple answer to the hon. Gentleman's first question. Every single member of our party was elected on the basis of a pledge that we believed in social justice—that we actually believed in what we said in our manifesto—that we wanted to see students from lower social groups gain access to university, and wanted to see those with the necessary qualifications and ability go there. That is what we stand for. What we do not stand for is telling those students after winning seats in a general election "Now we are going to change our minds, and send you out of university with huge debts of £30,000." Nor will we say, as Conservative Front Benchers have said, that we will add commercial rates of interest to the debts of the poorest students who must take out the largest loans.
	I am proud of what our party is doing. I am proud that we are saying that to pay for that, and for social care for the elderly, we will tax the 1 per cent. who are the wealthiest in the land, earning more than £100,000 a year, and make them pay a little more. I am not ashamed to tell the hon. Gentleman that I believe in social justice, and that I believe in progressive taxation to pay for it.
	The hon. Gentleman's second point is important, and has been made constantly by us and by the Government. We believe that our universities do need more money. Academic salaries cannot remain at their present level. We cannot have PhD research students working on less than £8,000 a year, which has been happening in many of our universities. We must stop that drain.
	We believe that we must match the amount—roughly £1.1 billion—that the Government say they would provide in top-up fees. The hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell has said that he will do more or less the same. It is the assumptions made by Conservative Front Benchers that I now wish to examine. We need to arrive at a fair balance.
	Will the Conservative proposals mean extra investment? The Conservatives make two claims: that their proposals will not cost the taxpayer an extra penny, and that their policy will generate an extra £21 billion of investment for universities over 20 years. If it does not come from the taxpayer, where will the £21 billion come from? For one thing, £9 billion of it does not exist at all. It will supposedly be generated by the universities themselves in endowments. If the Liberal Democrats had said "We are going to magic £9 billion which does not exist", you would have roared. Well, you would not, Madam Deputy Speaker, because you are too polite; but the House would have.
	After seven years, we hear this proposal to magic £9 billion. Let me tell the House what it actually means. It means the provision of £500 million a year for the next 20 years—and it assumes that private giving to our universities will rise to the level experienced in the United States, not in 20 years' time but on day one! Many of our universities are struggling to receive even meagre amounts, but because this will be a Conservative Government, they will flood the universities with money on day one.

Chris Grayling: What about the Thomas report?

Phil Willis: Well, let us take the Thomas report. [Interruption.] A lot of sedentary interventions are being made.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. If Members wish to make interventions, perhaps they will do so in the usual way.

Phil Willis: Thank you for your protection, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Barry Sheerman: The hon. Gentleman is probably being a little unfair on the Conservative party. He may recall that in its last manifesto, the foundation sum for every university that was to be magicked out of another sort of proposal was far more extreme and far more magical than this. The Conservatives' present proposal brings us slightly closer to reality.

Phil Willis: The hon. Gentleman is most unkind. I thought that we should just forget that episode. The idea that every one of Britain's universities could be endowed by the sale of Channel 4 struck me as immensely fanciful, although it was very exciting at the time.
	The hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell mentioned the Thomas task force. He was right to do so. Its report on voluntary giving to higher education states
	"The potential for growth is significant . . . if higher education can raise its share of donations to the proportion seen in the USA, the sector would receive £600 million annually."
	That is the basis on which the proposals come to us. The report goes on, however, to make it clear that that is an aspiration—perhaps one that could be achieved in 20 years' time. Our universities need the money now. The idea that they could generate income on the scale imagined and in the time scale suggested by the Conservatives is an illusion worthy of their backer Paul Daniels.

Robert Jackson: People give money to universities in the United States because they are seen as independent institutions—independent of the state, and requiring support from civil society. Does the hon. Gentleman think it likely that people in this country will give money on any reasonable scale to institutions that they see as state-owned, state-run and state-controlled?

Phil Willis: The hon. Gentleman is partly right. The trouble with basing the UK model on the US model is that the original bases are totally different. With the exception of a very small number of British institutions, our universities depend almost entirely on state funding for not just teaching but research. Although a small, elite set of Russell group universities are already bringing in significant amounts of additional resources, the vast majority of British universities are not capable of being independent from the state, certainly in the short term. The idea of their receiving donations such as those described in the Thomas report is therefore illusory and fanciful.
	If the hon. Gentleman is saying that all our universities should be independent institutions—there is a fair argument in that—and that we need to think about how to create them, I believe that some of them could move in that direction over 20 to 25 years. However, if we are thinking about the US, outside the Ivy league and other more prestigious state universities, a significant amount of higher education is supported at a very local level and is certainly not supported by huge voluntary giving.
	I come back to the Thomas report, which makes it clear that it is talking about an aspiration. Having established that £9 billion of the £21 billion promised by the Conservatives does not exist, it follows that a further £9 billion out of the total is also an illusion, since it is promised only as matched funding from the proposed student loans corporation. Some of our poorest universities, which prove unable to raise any of those resources, would, under the Conservative proposals for matched funding, not get any money. The new universities in particular, which are contributing the most in terms of expansion and have the largest number of part-time students, would lose out. How much money goes to universities depends entirely on how much they can raise themselves, and the most prestigious institutions are the ones most likely to benefit since they will find it easier to generate funds.
	With university income dependent on an institution's ability to raise matched funding and expansion almost entirely dependent on our mainstream universities, the Conservatives are proposing a redistribution of resources based on prestige, not need. Perversely, while the Conservatives have rightly criticised Government proposals for increasing student debt, their own proposals to provide extra investment depend critically on the poorer students taking out the maximum loans on which they will have to pay the maximum interest and accrue the maximum debt. If that is not a classic Conservative proposal, I do not know what is. Their detachment from reality is truly classic.
	For the Liberal Democrats, our fundamental criticism of both Conservative and Government proposals for higher education is the poverty of their vision of what higher education should be about. For both, our universities are to become little more than high-class employment exchanges, where degrees are valued by their market currency, where students are consumers and minority academic courses are to become the province of the wealthy.

Anne Campbell: rose—

Phil Willis: I want to finish.
	When the Secretary of State said,
	"I do not mind there being some medievalists around for ornamental purposes, but there is no reason for this state to pay for them",
	I thought that he was being light-hearted. He was not: he was defining new Labour's utilitarian vision for higher education. By contrast, the Liberal Democrats are a party holding true to its liberal past and the liberal promise to expand and not restrict the horizons of human imagination. That means a higher education system that caters for diversity through diversity and one that brings together universities, the further education sector and e-learning.
	We as a party have set out our proposals and said how we will pay for them. Under our proposals, no students would end their university days with debts for fees and top-up fees. Next year the electorate will have a decision to make—whether to support two parties that have put our students into debt, or a party that wants to invest in them.

Kim Howells: I beg to move, To leave out from "House" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
	"welcomes the passage of the Higher Education Act 2004; approves the further steps the Government is taking to widen participation, including the establishment of the Office for Fair Access, and enhanced bursaries; welcomes the improvement in support for part-time students being introduced by the Government, including the first ever grant package available from this autumn; rejects the Liberal Democrat policy of abolition of tuition fees, depriving universities of a dedicated income stream; congratulates the Government on maintaining fair and affordable loan repayment terms and rejects the policies proposed by the Official Opposition which would require those graduates who can least afford it to pay the most for their higher education; recognises the need to maintain UK universities at the forefront of world research and to equip the UK workforce with the high-level skills needed to compete in the global marketplace; congratulates the Government on record levels of investment in higher education, to almost £10 billion by 2005–06, with a 9 per cent. increase in research funding to 2007–08, additional income from variable fees, and further increases in Government funding to be announced shortly; looks forward to the introduction of a £2,700 maintenance grant for new students from 2006 alongside the improved student support package available from fee deferral, increased maintenance loans and loan write-offs for new students after 25 years; and welcomes the impact these policies will have on encouraging students from less well-off backgrounds to consider entering higher education."
	I am delighted that we have the opportunity to debate higher education today. It is certainly one of the keys to the country's success and it happens to be a subject close to my heart, especially since last Thursday afternoon when I gained this appointment. I am grateful, too, for the opportunity to respond to the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis), and I look forward to hearing the speech of the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Collins). Both Members invariably make thoughtful and helpful contributions, and the contribution of the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough was no exception.
	All in the House now agree that higher education needs additional funding. That is at least an improvement on last year's position when the Liberal Democrats and the Government both shared that view, but the official Opposition took the view that funding and student numbers in higher education could and perhaps should be cut. So higher education needs more funding: the question is how, and who pays. The Government's position is clear and we spent much of last year debating it. The Opposition parties also have proposals to answer that question, and we have heard one of the parties expound them at length today. I shall argue that they are proposals, but not necessarily workable alternatives.
	The Government have three main priorities in their higher education reform programme.

Anne Campbell: May I congratulate my hon. Friend on his new post? He has a hard act to follow, but I am sure that he will live up to it. Given that universities need more money, what does he think of the Liberal Democrat proposals to abolish the Department of Trade and Industry and therefore the science research funding? How will that help universities and where will the Liberal Democrats get the extra money from?

Kim Howells: Speaking as a Minister with three years' experience in the Department of Trade and Industry who worked closely with my noble Friend Lord Sainsbury, the Minister for Science and Innovation, I have to say that my hon. Friend asks an intriguing question.

Phil Willis: I would not want the Minister to go away intrigued, without having an answer to the question. Of course the Liberal Democrats would not abolish the science budget. It would be transferred almost entirely to the Department for Education and Skills, which is where we believe it should be based. That is the interface with our university structure and that is what we believe should happen.

Kim Howells: I am grateful for that intervention, but I have to say that I did not share that perception when the proposals for the Department of Trade and Industry were first introduced. One assumed that that part of the DTI's budget would be scrapped, so I am glad to hear that it will not be. One wonders how many other parts of the DTI budget will not be scrapped either. However, this is a time for constructive debate and moving forward together. I am sure that the House will not want us to rake over that sort of question, which was dealt with admirably in last Wednesday's Prime Minister's Question Time.
	We have three main priorities in our higher education reform programme. First, we want to expand and widen participation. The country's needs, now and in the future, will depend on the knowledge and skills of our people. All the evidence shows that the need for graduate level skills will increase and that we are wasting too much talent, with too many of those born into less advantaged families still feeling that university is not for them, whatever their ability.
	Secondly, we want to give universities the freedom and resources to compete successfully in the international market—and it certainly is an international market, which is becoming increasingly difficult for universities the world over. We need to give institutions the financial security and stability to allow them to back our world-class researchers, invest in infrastructure and provide first-class teaching and services to students.
	Finally, we need to make the system of financial support for students fairer by abolishing the requirement to pay fees up front, providing for fair and affordable repayments for graduates, and helping students from poorer backgrounds with additional grants.
	This is a coherent strategy for reform, as set out in last year's White Paper, and the Higher Education Act 2004. The goal is to provide access to world-class higher education for all those with the potential to benefit. I shall look briefly at some Opposition policies, in the hope that we can have a constructive debate about them.
	As we have heard, the Liberal Democrats would fund higher education entirely from taxpayers' money, through a new supertax. They have said how much of that supertax they would spend on higher education, but they have not been clear about how much higher education needs to expand, or how future expansion would be funded. When the Liberal Democrat spokesman sums up the debate, I should be very interested to hear his thoughts on that.
	Also, there are no guarantees that the funding would be forthcoming if other priorities emerged, and quite a few other priorities have emerged already in the Liberal Democrats' plans. The hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough gave us some comfort when he said that his party would guarantee that HE would get the money. I am sure that we will all remember that in the months to come. However, his party has also guaranteed to provide free long-term care for the elderly, to cut council tax by £100, to cut taxes for the lower paid, to fund an increase in pensions, and to provide £500 million to abolish dental charges. Therefore, whether HE would really get the money is open to question.

John Pugh: Will the Minister give way?

Kim Howells: I will in a moment, but in many ways that is the nub of the problem. Being centrally dependent on the state means that HE has to take its chances with other competing priorities in public spending decisions. The record shows that that does not work out well in the long term.
	Before I give way, I remind the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough that we may have arrived at our current state precisely because of that strict dependence on central funding. For example, throughout the 1990s there was a very large reduction in unit funding for HE, which fell by 36 per cent. in real terms between 1989 and 1997. I know that the hon. Gentleman is passionate about education, and that he was very concerned about that fall in unit funding.

John Pugh: The Minister asks how we would fund HE, and our answer is clear: we would do it by means of progressive taxation. He asks what we would do about the future expansion of universities. Is it the Government's default approach that they will get any extra money that is needed from the student, and not from any other source?

Kim Howells: Part of the money comes from students, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman knows, but the taxpayer gives huge subsidies to the universities, and that will continue. My argument is that the benefits that accrue from obtaining a degree—largely at taxpayers' expense but with some contribution from students—make it just about the best investment in the future that anyone can make. I should be very interested if the hon. Gentleman were to say that he disagreed with that.
	We have to remember two things: first, not everyone goes into HE—currently, just 43 per cent. of 18 to 30-year-olds do so; and secondly, going into HE confers substantial benefits, both social and financial, as I just hinted. In particular, the average rate of return to people who have a degree is very substantial, and evidence from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development shows that, in the UK, it is among the best in the world.
	It is therefore fair to ask those who benefit from HE to contribute to the costs. I remember being shocked, in 1997, when I read the report by Sir Ron Dearing, as he was then. The report spoke about the need for a contribution from students, but I belong to the generation that received what people called "free education". It was not free, of course, but was paid for by the other kids in my village who did not go to grammar school or university. I was lucky, but they were not, and they paid for me.

David Rendel: I agree with the Minister that some graduates are likely to gain some financial advantage from going to university, but that should not be exaggerated. Has he forgotten that many graduates would probably have entered well-paid jobs even if they had not gone to university? They would have started earning sooner than those who started university, and their lifetime earnings would have been larger as a result. I agree that there should be wider participation in university education, but has the Minister also forgotten that as the number of people who go to university increases, the difference between the average salary of those who go to university and those who do not decreases? He should not exaggerate the case.

Kim Howells: I apologise to the House if I have exaggerated the case. I did not mean to do so, and the hon. Gentleman is right to remind me of those matters. However, as a general rule, it is true that, on average, graduates will have considerably larger lifetime earning than others. It is also worth bearing it in mind that in future we as a nation will not earn as large a part of our national income from manufacturing industry as was the case with previous generations. The nuts-and-bolts jobs that used to sustain many parts of the country are disappearing, and almost every prediction of future employment that I have read suggests that we need more and more skills of the sort that are taught in many of our universities these days. If we do not take that seriously we will have big problems. However, I take the hon. Gentleman's point.
	The advantage of the Government's policy—that is, fees supported by income-contingent loans—is that the graduate still pays through the tax system, but that the universities are much more masters of their destiny, with an independent source of revenue. I very much agree with the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr. Jackson), who intervened earlier to say how the great American institutions get money in and sustain their income. We have a good deal to learn in that respect.

Robert Jackson: The hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis) seemed to think that only private institutions in America took that approach, but that is not so. Berkeley college is a state university, but it has a bigger endowment than Oxford university.

Kim Howells: I know little about these matters at present, and the hon. Gentleman knows much more than I, but I am very interested in the courses offering general access to university that are going on in and around Berkeley. They seem to be growing as a consequence of at least some of that income being sustained, and at a high enough level to allow experiments with other forms of higher education. Perhaps we will have time in this afternoon's debate to touch on what we call foundation degrees and work-based degrees. We have a good deal to learn from the Americans about that as well.
	Another aspect of the Liberal Democrats' policy needs to be examined. Under their proposals as I understand them—I am sure that the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough will correct me if I am wrong—students would study at home for their first two years.

Phil Willis: indicated dissent.

Kim Howells: The hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but I shall string together a couple of questions for him, to check what his party's proposals are. First, what would their proposals mean for students who come from poorer backgrounds, or from parts of the country without an older university or one built in the 1960s? Would their ability to study at the best universities—I realise that that term is dubious— become a lottery based on where their parents live?

Phil Willis: I am grateful to the Minister for allowing me to respond on that point. I realise that he has much reading to do in his early days as a Minister in the Department for Education and Skills, but I recommend that he read the Liberal Democrat policy document entitled "Quality, Diversity and Choice". It looks at HE and its relationship with further education and it recommends moving to a system based much more on credit, as is the case in the US, with a much more mobile student population. We do not want students to stay at home, in the strict sense, but we accept that the reality now is that roughly every other student is part time. Almost all of those part-time students study from home, and we must recognise that they are a very important part of the equation. Of course that should not preclude students from being able to apply to the most prestigious universities for the courses that they want to follow, but we should not say either that people who study at their local university are being offered an inferior product.
	If the Government say that, they are doing a huge disservice to mainstream universities, which offer a remarkable product, given the resources that they have available.

Robert Jackson: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I hope that Front Benchers will leave at least some time for Back Benchers to speak.

Madam Deputy Speaker: That point is well taken. Let us proceed with the debate as quickly as possible.

Kim Howells: I take that point, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I shall be guided by you.
	I would be the last person to imply that one would receive an inferior education from a university that used to be a polytechnic. My patch contains the university of Glamorgan, which is a superb institution, many of whose students live at home. The hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough makes an interesting point. If many thousands of students decide that they want to live away from home, it throws up questions about the financial model that he talks about.
	I shall deal briefly with the Conservatives' proposals, although I should have liked to deal with them at length. Perhaps we will have an opportunity to do so at some stage in the future. The Conservatives have said that they will keep our income-contingent repayment scheme. We need to follow the logic of that carefully, to see how income-contingent repayments would work with high interest rates. Income-contingent repayments are not like a mortgage. How much one pays in regular monthly payments depends on what one earns, not what one owes. People pay in proportion to their income above a threshold. So if someone is on low earnings, their repayments are low. If someone earns less than the threshold, the repayments stop altogether. That means that the loan takes longer to repay. With our system, that is not a problem, because the interest we charge just matches inflation. It does not matter if someone takes longer to repay: they only ever repay what they borrowed in real terms.
	However, with real rates of interest, it is very different. If someone takes a long time to repay, because their earnings are lower, the interest racks up and they pay back a lot more. If someone takes a career break, perhaps to start a family, the interest really begins to mount up. Two years ago, we exemplified some revealing case studies for the Education and Skills Committee and I hope that hon. Members will take a look at them. If interest rates were about 8 per cent., a low earner with a £10,000 loan who took a career break could easily have to repay £60,000, or six times what they borrowed. In contrast, a city earner with high earnings and no career break would repay just £15,000. It is hard to see how that is fair.
	Under the Conservative proposals, where would the money come from? It would not come from high earners. They would repay their loans quickly, so the burden of high interest rates would not fall on them. In fact, the extra money would come from medium and low earners, especially anyone unfortunate enough to take a career break. They would take the longest to repay and thus would bear the greatest burden of that policy. What impact would that have on widening participation? Greater interest rates would mean greater risks for the individual. Those less sure about entering higher education—the very ones we are encouraging to think about it—would be put off in their droves.
	Do the Conservatives' sums add up? We have identified at least three serious holes in the arithmetic. They have underestimated by £400 million the likely fee income by using data from 2003–04 instead of estimates for 2009–10. They have underestimated by £300 million the income lost the to the Exchequer if the student loan debt book is given away. Nor do the Conservatives' proposals make any provision to deal with the unfortunate consequences of high interest rates, and the cost of writing off loans for policy reasons. That is not tenable, and putting it right could cost another £400 million. So the Conservatives' sums are out by as much as £1 billion a year. Their new policy is grossly unfair, and the sums do not add up. I shall leave for another day the question of whether the Conservatives' proposals are actually feasible to implement. We have two different proposals from the Opposition parties, but as I said at the beginning, neither is a practical alternative.
	Everyone in this House knows and values the contribution made to national life by Lord Dearing. He has done great work in education for this and for previous Administrations. All have valued his independent approach. His committee of inquiry on higher education, in 1996 and 1997, espoused the principle that students should contribute to the cost of their higher education, and that led us to the introduction of fees in the first place. I remember it well because I took the Bill through the House and, temporarily, I was the most hated man in Britain. I am sure that someone took over from me fairly quickly. The logic of that conclusion is as strong today as it was then, if not stronger. Students should make a contribution, but it is better if they do so as graduates, and that is what our fee deferral plans allow for. Of course they must also contribute in a fair and affordable way. That means avoiding the shockingly regressive proposals from the Conservative party, which would have those who benefit least from their higher education paying the most.

Tim Collins: Let me begin by adding my words of congratulation to the new Minister on his appointment. I do so warmly and for two reasons. The first is the cause of the vacancy—the deserved promotion of his predecessor. I am delighted that my recommendation that he should be promoted to the Cabinet, which I made on the record in the House some months ago, did not blight his chances. He engaged admirably with both Government and Opposition Members and thoroughly deserved his elevation. The second reason is that I enjoyed the exchanges I had with the new Minister when we both had responsibility for the Transport portfolio. He is a thoroughly nice and decent person and, like his predecessor, he is one of those Ministers who genuinely engages with the points made to him. I wish him well in his new job.
	I do not doubt for a moment the passion or sincerity of the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis), who opened this debate in his characteristically robust fashion. He clearly genuinely cares for the future of higher education and for the life chances of our students. I hope that he would accept that he does not have a monopoly on concern over such issues. We may, and do, differ on the best means of securing our objectives, but we all wish to see a stronger financial position for our universities and an affordable pathway ahead for our students.
	All three parties have now set out their policies for funding higher education. We all acknowledge that our universities are badly underfunded and have been for many years, both before and since 1997. We all agree that unless that is reversed major damage will be done to this country's academic and economic standing, that universities therefore need a substantial annual extra injection of cash, and that that should be found in ways that ensure fair and equitable access to higher education, but there are important differences between us, too.
	The Government believe that the way forward is to impose top-up fees. That is a clear and open breach of Labour's 2001 manifesto, which stated:
	"We will not introduce 'top-up' fees and have legislated to prevent them."
	Well, now they have legislated to bring them in. The Government's plans do not make sense for taxpayers, who will have to pay out £1.1 billion extra every year in order to give universities an extra £900 million a year, for students, who will face far higher debts under Labour's plans than under either of the other two alternatives, or for universities, which will face political control of their income, the creation of the widely loathed university access regulator, and no guarantee at all that Labour's second version of fees will be additional to, rather than a substitute for, existing grant. After all, Labour's first version of fees was clawed back in its entirety by the Treasury.
	There is an intellectual argument for unrestricted fees and a genuine market mechanism, and that is what some vice-chancellors and others would like to see.
	That is not what the Government legislation offers—indeed, Ministers have specifically ruled it out. Many of those who most enthusiastically support fees do so because they want, and hope, to see fees of not £3,000 a year but £5,000, £10,000 or even £15,000. Ministers cite some of those who hold that view in support of their case for fees, but then they turn round and tell their Back Benchers that, of course, there is no question of fees rising above £3,000 a year for many years. Somebody somewhere is being badly deceived.
	Then there are the Liberal Democrat proposals. They agree with us that there should be no fees but believe that more money for universities should be provided by raising income tax, at a time when every other G7 country is cutting it. While the rest of the world is following the UK's example of the 1980s and realises that lower tax rates, especially at the top, generate more revenue, increased investment and stronger competitiveness, the Lib Dems want to return to the days of the 1960s and 1970s when Chancellors revelled in asserting that the rich should be squeezed until the pips squeak. As both Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy recognised, we do not make the poor rich by making the rich poor.
	Furthermore, as we have already heard, Lib Dem plans would leave universities wholly and solely dependent for their income on the good will of the Treasury. Universities would have no independent revenue stream, no insulation against the ups and downs of the economic cycle, and no protection when funding higher education becomes a less fashionable cause than it is today.
	Both Labour and Lib Dem plans conceal an unhealthy obsession with class. The Lib Dems want to wallop the rich through taxes, and Labour believes there are too many middle-class people at our top universities. Only Conservatives believe that working hard and doing well are not sins for which people's children should be punished.

Adrian Flook: Does my hon. Friend agree that it is patronising, and merely Lib Dem wailing, to continue to consider as statistically tied to his low-earning parents a student who is over 18, has left home and is probably about to earn more than the national average?

Tim Collins: I very much endorse my hon. Friend's point. The issue of fairness has already come up and it would not be going too far to say that earlier the Minister issued a challenge—I do not think he objects to that claim—when he said that it was the responsibility of those of us who disagree with the Government's plans to explain how ours would be fairer. To pick up my hon. Friend's powerful point, we do not believe that it is right for a dustman's son who becomes a merchant banker to be treated better by the system than a teacher's son who becomes a teacher. That is inherent in the Government's plan but not in ours.

David Rendel: The hon. Gentleman said that the only way to make universities independent is to ensure that they have their own funding stream, but surely as long as the Government are giving anything towards the cost of universities their overall funding will always be dependent on a Government decision as to how much the Government portion of that funding will be.

Tim Collins: The hon. Gentleman seems to be saying that as long as the Government hand over even a penny to universities they might as well hand over 100 per cent. of the funding and control universities' income. I do not agree. Indeed, it would seem that his own colleague does not agree, because if I understood the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough correctly, he said earlier that he could see a scenario, albeit over a long time—I think he spoke of a period of 20 years—in which the top universities would become more independent. If he thinks that is desirable and possible, we should welcome progress in that direction. Although the Government's method is not the same as ours, both we and the Government agree that it is sensible to give universities some form of income that is not dependent simply on the view taken by the Chancellor of the day.

Barry Sheerman: The hon. Gentleman briefly alluded to the fact that the Government believed that too many middle-class students are in higher education. The Select Committee has taken much evidence on that subject over the past two or three years and the message that has constantly come from the Government is not that there are too many middle-class students but that too few students of ability across the classes are entering higher education. If he ponders that, I think he will agree that it is a better interpretation.

Tim Collins: I always enjoy interventions from the hon. Gentleman, who is a distinguished Chairman of the Select Committee. However, it is always important in the House to listen very carefully to what we each say. In fact, I said that Labour believe that there are too many middle-class people at our top universities. That is an unarguable interpretation of Labour's view, because our top universities neither want to expand nor are capable of significantly doing so. Thus the Government's proposal—to change the social mix of those who attend our top universities—would mean that to put some other categories in, some of those currently there would have to come out. That is the logical and unavoidable consequence of what the Government are doing. His point about wider access to higher education as a whole is valid, but I chose my phrase carefully, and he must accept that it is a fair interpretation of the Government's view on the matter—indeed, it is the only logical one.

Phil Willis: First, may I thank the hon. Gentleman for the generous comments he made at the beginning of his speech? Does he agree that under previous Conservative Governments and under two terms of the Labour Government no legislation has prevented any university from raising money privately? In fact, the systems are not mutually exclusive and many universities raise funds privately, especially Oxford and Cambridge, which have a proud tradition in that regard. The United States pays more of its gross domestic product to its universities than we do, so I do not understand how increasing the state's contribution to higher education would prejudice giving.

Tim Collins: We are making progress. Only a few minutes ago, the hon. Gentleman described as fanciful the Thomas report recommendation urging that higher education should move towards endowment income of £600 million a year. Now he makes a strong case in favour of that, and I agree. Universities already have an income stream from private sources, and I think his intervention implied that that should be increased. That is very much part of our proposals.
	We also believe that both Labour and Lib Dem plans sadly fail to address the grave need faced by our universities not only to boost day-to-day income—all three parties have proposals for that—but to deal with the serious capital repairs backlog and, especially for our best universities, to begin to match the huge endowment funds available to their competitors overseas. The Conservative vision avoids those problems and rises to the challenges.
	We propose no fees, either up front or after graduation. Teaching for future generations in higher education should be free, as it was for everyone lucky enough to go to university before Labour came to office in 1997. There should be no means-testing for access to student loans, reversing the Government's mean-spirited attempt to pretend that joint parental income of £25,000 or £30,000 a year somehow makes families rich.
	A welcome element of the Government's proposals, which we intend to retain, is the introduction of a £1,500 a year student grant for those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds. Under our proposals, that grant would be available according to exactly the same terms and for exactly the same number of students as the Government propose. That, together with the abolition of fees, will ensure that access depends on ability to learn, not ability to pay.
	In that context, I regret the fact that last week at Prime Minister's Question Time, the Prime Minister asserted that the Government were providing assistance to poorer students worth £2,700 per annum, while the Conservatives proposed to provide only £1,500 per annum, and that that was somehow less. Let us be clear. Both we and the Government propose a maintenance grant of £1,500 a year, but their plans provide for an additional £1,200 to pay fees. We would get rid of fees for everybody, so students would not need £1,200 to help to pay the fees. Nor do we believe in a taxpayer subsidy on interest rates on student loans. We would remove an expensive and unjustifiable item of public expenditure. Doing so would generate more than enough resources to replace every penny of fee income for universities.

Alan Whitehead: I have listened carefully to what the hon. Gentleman is saying about fees. He appears to believe that fees will continue to be charged up front and remitted, on the basis of the Government's proposal to introduce up-front grants for poorer students of £2,700. In fact, after 2006, up-front fees will no longer exist, so it is not possible to claim that a good proportion of the Government's proposed grant for poorer students will be earmarked for fee remission. It will simply be money in the pocket for university students to assist them with the costs they will encounter, so I hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw his suggestion.

Tim Collins: Unlike many of us who are in the Chamber, the hon. Gentleman did not serve on the Standing Committee that examined the Higher Education Bill. Had he done so, he would have heard the then Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education say again and again and again—as indeed the Secretary of State said again and again and again—that it was all right for the Government to introduce fees of £3,000 a year because there was a £3,000 a year package to deal with the consequences of the fees. The Government said that that would be organised by having a grant of £1,500, which would be retained under our proposals, £1,200 to help students pay off the fees in due course, and £300 of remission or bursaries administered by the higher education institutions. We would retain the £1,500, but we would get rid of the fees, so people would not need the £1,200 provided by the Government that, as Ministers repeatedly state, was intended to help to compensate poorer students for the consequences of introducing fees.
	Our other proposals include the outright abolition of OFFA—the university access regulator—and the removal of most of the HEFCE bureaucracy, setting universities free from political correctness and the form-filling culture alike. We will transfer the existing student loan book to the ownership of the higher education sector, giving it a major new asset, a guaranteed and independent future income stream and the ability to raise £3 billion in capital in the next five years. Moreover, our plans will provide universities with £500 million a year over 18 years in matching funds for contributions to endowment funds—a massive boost to those who are competing for the best minds with the Ivy league.

David Rendel: The hon. Gentleman says that he would get rid of a lot of bureaucracy by abolishing both OFFA and HEFCE. I understand that he would also introduce—if he gets the chance to do so—a national scholarship scheme, under which presumably every student would need to administer, either for themselves or by another mechanism, the money going from them to the university to pay for their fees. A vast extra bureaucracy would be needed to deal with that per student, rather than per course, as is done at present.

Tim Collins: The hon. Gentleman and I genuinely disagree about that. Our proposal is indeed to abolish OFFA outright and to get rid of the bulk of HEFCE. We do not propose to abolish HEFCE in its entirety. I must tell him that a number of vice-chancellors support us—not least a gentleman to whom I wanted to refer earlier who has written a very positive piece in The Guardian this morning: Dr. Peter Knight, the vice-chancellor of the university of Central England. In a piece that I slightly blush to quote at length because it is so very friendly towards us, he says that he welcomes our proposals to cut bureaucracy. As a vice-chancellor, he does not believe that those proposals will be subject to the disagreements and difficulties that the hon. Gentleman has identified.
	Our plans will involve much less debt for students, who would, on average, have to pay back £7,000 less than under the Government's proposals. I listened carefully to the Minister when he tried to say that high interest rates are worse than low interest rates, as people must pay more. He seemed to leave out a major element in the calculation: under our proposals, students would not have to pay fees, so their debts would be £9,000—about half what they are now—and the vast majority would have a substantially better package than under the Government's proposals, given the amount that they would have to repay and the time that it would take them to repay it.
	We, and we alone, have come up with proposals to tackle the major capital and endowment needs of universities. The Conservative party is offering substantially more to universities than either the Labour party or the Liberal Democrats, who are essentially offering, as we do, an annual increase in income, but unlike us, are not offering additional capital or a major new asset for the higher education sector. We, and we alone, believe that universities should be free to set their own admissions criteria, to pick their own students and to choose their own spending priorities.
	No wonder that our plans have been welcomed by Professor Michael Sterling of the Russell group. There was a time, not many months ago, when Labour Members used to pop up and ask—I confess that it was an awkward question—whether we could name a single vice-chancellor who supports the Conservative approach to higher education. I can certainly name at least one, and there are rather more than that these days. I do not claim that it is yet all of them, but a number of them are much more positive about our proposals than ever before.
	I commend to the House the excellent article written by Dr. Peter Knight in today's edition of the Education Guardian. As I say, it would be embarrassing to quote all of it because I regard none of it as other than deeply flattering, but his bottom line is that the Conservatives
	"abolished fees, cut bureaucracy, slain a few unpopular dragons such as the Office of Fair Access and come up with proposals that address the funding needs of universities. The circle is well and truly squared, absolutely brilliant and actually credible."
	The choice is clear: massive debt under Labour; tax rises under the Liberal Democrats; or the best deal possible for students, universities and taxpayers under the Conservatives. Labour breaks its promises. Liberal Democrats know that they will never have to keep their promises. The Conservatives will deliver on our promises.

Barry Sheerman: I always have an interesting role in such debates: as Chairman of the Select Committee on Education and Skills, I try to refrain from getting too much into the party slagging-off match, which we have had previously. This has been quite a healthy and robust debate, and it has been conducted in much better temper than some of the debates that I have been privy to over the past three years. I want to look—reasonably objectively, I hope—at some of the issues that have been rather missed out today.
	I warmly welcome my hon. Friend the Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education to his new post. We on the Select Committee are looking forward to an early appearance by him before the Select Committee. As he knows, he will take over his predecessor's engagements, and within a month, he will be coming to the Wilson Room to meet us.
	I find days like this a little embarrassing: you were once a student of mine, Madam Deputy Speaker, and the Minister shared a room with me in the House for many years. I know as many secrets about him as he does about me, so if I scrutinise him too hard on the Select Committee, I may regret it, but I genuinely welcome him to the post. He is very knowledgeable about education and higher education. I am sure that, as he becomes as immersed in higher education as he was in the railways—can people be immersed in the railways?—he will become a formidable repository of knowledge about Government policy.
	I wish to push my hon. Friend on one issue. Some of us strongly supported the Government's view on flexible fees. At the time of the debate, he will remember that the Secretary of State for Education and Skills and many others who spoke for the Government urged support for the policy on the basis that OFFA would have very strong powers to ensure something that the Select Committee recommended in its report on access to higher education more than two and a half years ago. I refer to greater powers for HEFCE to set benchmarks for fair access, based on ability, to all the institutions, using the long-tried method of setting benchmarks and finding out whether colleges and universities would meet them. If they did not meet them, or did not show that they had plans to do so, they would not able to charge increased fees.
	During the press conference held by OFFA yesterday, apparently, it was said almost as an aside that there would be no relationship between OFFA and universities and colleges having to meet any targets at all. I should be happy if the Minister would clear that up either in his winding-up speech or by intervening on my speech now. Is there such a relationship any longer; or, in effect, has OFFA been neutralised in that respect?

Kim Howells: OFFA has certainly not been neutralised. It is a very powerful body. Indeed, the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) and I discussed the issue yesterday in Committee when debating the regulations for OFFA. He complained to me in vigorous terms that OFFA was far too swingeing and powerful and had too many weapons in its arsenal. I am sure that my hon. Friend will take from that my reassurance that, where transgressions take place if universities charge higher fees than they may have set out in their prospectuses and where that breaks the access agreement and plan, OFFA will be able to act very decisively.

Barry Sheerman: I thank my hon. Friend very much. I hope that his comments have put the issue to rest. I will look at his words with some interest in the cold light of day tomorrow.
	I wish to move on by saying that most of the Schwartz recommendations that we read this morning are to be welcomed. Indeed, many of them paraphrase the report on access that the Select Committee produced two and a half years ago. Certainly, we strongly recommended post-qualification access. We could not see the sense of admitting people to university on the basis of predicted results.
	That leads not only to confusion but to injustice in terms of who gets into which institutions. We believe that such a change, which has been widely welcomed by vice-chancellors and many others in the sectors, should be speedily addressed. Many recommendations have been made and they include one from an influential Committee chaired by one of my predecessors, Chris Price. It proposed just such a change.

Phil Willis: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Secretary of State's support for the Schwartz proposals for making applications after the results are known would bring forward in the school year the A2 examinations and the vocational level 3 examinations? The time that staff have to teach students post-16 is getting narrower, and the universities and the examination system, rather than the teaching and learning profession, must bend to that.

Barry Sheerman: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. There will be teething problems and things can be done better or worse. Sensitivity and give and take between universities and schools and colleges are important in getting things right. However, I think that he and I share a view about the principles involved in assessing students.
	In the evidence that we took and in our trips to elite institutions on the west and east coasts of the United States, the Committee found that universities there were able to judge a candidate in the round using four or five different criteria. We felt that using just the straight A-level results was too blunt an instrument to judge a student accurately. We believe that a SAT score, college examinations, the submission of a piece of work and a teacher's report add up to four or five different factors that could be weighed before a student was accepted into a college. It is interesting that the one thing that bound the six elite universities that we visited was the fact that they did not believe in interviews. I remember—I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Valerie Davey) does too—that one president told us, "If we wanted more people like us, we'd interview."
	By and large, I welcome the Schwartz proposals. They move in the right direction, and it is important that we get things right. Select Committees have consistently agreed on an all-party basis that ability should determine who gets into any university. There should be no equivocation about that, and there should be no special selection for minority groups if that overrides ability. Ability must be the criteria, but a perceptive way of judging ability must be the absolute priority.
	This is a debate about higher education and, in a sense, the debate about flexible fees and top-up fees—whatever one wants to call them—has obscured some of the most important issues that came out of the higher education White Paper and some of the issues that the Government have still not answered. I am sorry to address this point to the Minister on his first day at the Dispatch Box in his new job, but when we consider what gave rise to the debate, we realise that it was not just Dearing. We know that the Dearing report made a great contribution to the debate, but the Universities UK analysis of what was needed to equip universities for a new generation of competition against many global competitors also represented a significant milestone.
	We should also maintain the secret of higher education success in this country. I say to the Minister and to those on the Opposition Front Benches that the key to our success in higher education, when compared with other university systems in mainland Europe, has been our emphasis on excellence not only in research but in maintaining the quality of undergraduate education. Indeed, the Select Committee has consistently emphasised—I believe this passionately—the need for a relationship between teaching and research in the same institution. That relationship has been long forgotten and abandoned in most of our neighbours in Europe, and they have certainly suffered from that. Because of that, many people in the other 24 member states of the European Union would come here for an undergraduate education as well as a postgraduate education if they had the choice, the mobility and the language skills.

Tim Collins: Although we have obviously had our differences in the course of the debate, I thoroughly endorse what the hon. Gentleman is saying at the moment. I hope that it will be possible for us to find a cross-party basis on which to build on what he has said about the commitment to excellence and the relationship between teaching and research. They are fundamental to the United Kingdom's strength now and in the future. He is quite right about that.

Barry Sheerman: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. He may not like what I shall say in a moment, but I will try to make my remarks not too party political. The Universities UK review said that there was a £8.79 billion resource gap for higher education. Hon. Members will realise that the Select Committee had a close look at the White Paper and I wish that people would read and re-read the Select Committee reports. We could have saved a lot of money on the Schwartz inquiry if they had been read thoroughly. As I said a couple of weeks ago about the exam results, if people had considered our recommendations about examinations and A-levels, they might have saved themselves some trouble.
	The Select Committee put its finger on the problem in our evaluation of the White Paper. We said yes to flexible fees and agreed that Dearing was right. Higher education needs diverse sources of income. That is healthier for universities. I am a governor of the London School of Economics and we are quite good at finding other sources of income because we are a global brand. However, that is much more difficult for Huddersfield university or even the university of Birmingham. There is no doubt that an institution is more able to find sources of income if it has international alumni with a tradition of giving. The LSE has been lucky and assiduous in that regard. Some institutions are better than others at finding funds.
	Money from research institutes, foundations and alumni is all very good. Given the tradition of our country, I expect expectations to ratchet up. The hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis) is probably right. Expectations should not be set too high, because the culture of giving is very different and all the work that I have done suggests that it takes a long time to turn that culture round. It is beginning to change, but not that quickly.
	We want diverse sources of funding, but more than that we need secure funding for research. The Select Committee said that the research part of the White Paper was more important than the discussion about, and the proposals for, undergraduates paying something towards their education. That issue and the funding gap have not gone away. The work that I have done suggests that, even on the most optimistic estimates, flexible fees and top-up fees will bring in £1.5 billion. That is a ballpark figure. Let us be generous and say that it is £1.79 billion, but that still leaves a £7 billion gap.

Chris Grayling: The hon. Gentleman will surely remember that the Universities UK analysis of the UK funding gap was broadly divided into two parts: £3 billion worth of capital, which is addressed by our policy, and £5 billion that was revenue grant over three years and not over one.

Barry Sheerman: I am not talking about Conservative party proposals. We will evaluate them as time goes on. My remarks are addressed at all three parties—and the governing party, in particular. There is still a large gap in higher education resources and budgets.
	That is of great concern to vice-chancellors owing to its impact on capital and the deteriorating state of some of our universities. I visit schools all the time, and they are looking pretty good these days because of investment in new buildings and modernisations, but I have visited universities with severely out of date equipment and buildings, which worries me greatly. I am directing my comments mainly at the Minister at the moment because we seem to be living in an era in which we like to avoid such difficult questions. Yes, it seems to be all right that we will get more money from flexible fees, but there is cap on that for a significant time, so such large sums of money will not come only from student contributions.
	I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West will agree that there has been tremendous investment in pre-school and school education across the piece and an increase in educational maintenance allowances, but money becomes thinner as one moves up the age range because spending on higher education is significantly less, although we welcome the fact that it has grown. We want to meet the challenge of staying at the top on research and our research-rich universities—that is the proper euphemism that we use these days if we do not want to call them the best universities—but big science is enormously expensive.
	The Committee also criticised the White Paper for the way in which research funding was being focused on fewer universities. All the evidence that we took was pretty unanimous in suggesting that taking away research money from research departments with a rating of 3 or 4 continues to be a disaster and that we will reap the dividends of a lack of investment in such institutions as time goes on. Sir Richard Sykes, the provost of Imperial college, said that he wanted research investment to be concentrated on a handful of universities. We asked him if he meant a handful to which he said, "Yes, five." That would mean that most research universities were concentrated in London and the south-east and that there would not be even one premier research university in each of our regions. As a Welsh Member, I am sure that the Minister could not accept that. The Committee's report suggested that we must have at least one premier research university in each of the country's regions.
	The Committee also commented on evidence taken regarding a lack of investment in lower-ranking universities. The pattern of research success shows that many innovations come from aspirant universities that are struggling to move from 3 ratings to 4, 5 and beyond. The Government have not tackled the resource gap and the other parties have not addressed it significantly. Our attention has been taken off the matter because of our debate on higher education top-up and flexible fees. During that debate, vice-chancellors and others in the sector said, "Whatever you think about this debate, isn't it wonderful to have higher education on the front pages of every newspaper—even the tabloids?" Yes, it was, but we need a genuine debate about fundamentals, and we were partly taken off track by the obsession with student contributions.
	Let us get back to considering the overall role of universities in our society and the fact that universities are the largest employers in most cities and towns where they are found. The fate of communities rests more on their local universities than anything else, and that is true of York, Huddersfield, Oxford, Cambridge and London, with its 34 institutions. Imagine the impact on research, education and the way in which universities contribute to our economy if they were taken out. That consideration brings us back to a more holistic approach to what universities mean for our society.
	It is uncomfortable for the Government and all of us to consider investment for universities merely in terms of how much money is going in, because we must also consider more and more the quality of what is coming out. I have been one of the greatest opponents of talk about Mickey-Mouse degrees and easy courses. I have never found such a degree because they do not exist. Students are not daft and will not join a bad course in a British university that would not lead to employment or something worthwhile.

Chris Grayling: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Barry Sheerman: No; I am coming to the end of my speech.
	I am worried that universities might be turning out rather one-dimensional people. Although they may be good at their subjects, their education is less broad and well balanced than previously. When I talk to students in the United States, where I have taught as a visiting lecturer in Cornell university for many years, I find a greater breadth and depth across the piece than in our students. We must think about the quality and dimension of our university education and consider whether we are turning out what used to be called well rounded and multi-dimensional individuals. To be elitist, such people used to have an understanding of the arts, philosophy and a broad range of subjects. We did not just turn out social scientists, mathematicians, chemists, doctors and dentists. All our parties must consider the people whom we are turning out.
	On the night before John Smith died, I heard him make a moving speech, part of which questioned the way in which the educational system no longer seemed to turn out enough people who wanted to enter public service. I must say that he was talking towards the end of the Thatcher era. He thought that too many people who left education wanted to be have a high income with a job in the City. He talked about the need for people to be motivated towards public service—albeit properly rewarded—and dedicated to giving something back to the country in which they lived and to which they owed much. As we talk about higher education in the coming months before the election, I hope that that tone can be inserted into the debate.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Several hon. Members are clearly hoping to catch my eye in this relatively short debate. If their remarks are concise, more may be successful.

Robert Jackson: It is always a pleasure to follow the Chairman of the Select Committee and I shall endeavour to be briefer than he was.
	We are all grateful to the Liberal Democrats for offering the obscurity of one of their Supply day debates to enable the House to discuss the current state of, and future prospects for, higher education. That is especially useful now because we are plainly in the run-up to a general election, but we have not yet reached a point at which strategies and policies are set in stone, so there is still time and an opportunity for all parties to reflect on what is said in today's debate, as I am sure that they will want to do.
	I feel today an optimism about the prospects for our universities that I have not felt since the late 1980s when the Conservative Government in which I served took the first steps down the road on which the Government are making such good progress. We have reached and passed a historic turning point. With luck and good leadership, we will move steadily towards the high-quality, large-scale, diverse and accessible higher education that Britain needs as global competition intensifies and the new knowledge economy unfolds.
	There are a number of people whom we have to thank for this happy development, and I would like to mention them. Most immediately, there is the Secretary of State and the former higher education Minister, the right hon. Member for Hull, West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), now deservedly promoted. I wish his successor all success; as has been said, he has a hard act to follow. The Secretary of State and his former junior Minister picked up a difficult brief and delivered on it with a combination of charm and brutality that has been widely admired. Above and beyond them, however, there are two other important figures whose role also deserves acknowledgement.
	In the first place, obviously, there is the Prime Minister, together with his immediate advisers. They deserve the credit for recognising that a radical change in direction was needed and for giving the strong and courageous lead that was required. Then there is the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is customary nowadays to dwell on differences between No. 11 and No. 10; indeed it was said at the time that there were differences between them on the question of university fees. I shall return to that in a moment. However, it is important to recognise what the Chancellor has personally contributed to the more hopeful university scene that now lies before us.
	Since 1999, there has been steady growth in the funding of higher education. Above all—I know this from my constituency, which has so much science in it—the Chancellor, with Lord Sainsbury, has recognised the importance of investing in scientific research, and it is right to pay tribute to him for that. It is said that the Chancellor's concern about the fees policy related to two key issues: equity and accessibility, and the efficiency and effectiveness of university governance. Those are perfectly reasonable concerns, but I believe that experience will show them to be unwarranted. Let me explain why.
	As the stream of income paid by students increases, many universities will reach a "tipping point" at which their overall income from sources other than the Higher Education Funding Council will give them a real sense of responsibility for shaping their own future. As that happens, I believe that they will sharpen up their act and improve their internal governance in ways that no amount of Government exhortation and interference, of which we have had so much over the last two decades, can possibly hope to achieve.
	The concern about equity and accessibility will be met in the same way. Under the new policies, the universities will have a serious economic incentive to recruit and retain students. That will do more for equity and accessibility than 100 regulators. The Chancellor is known to be committed to evidence-based policy. I urge him to keep an open mind about the working out of the new policy, and I urge the Government as a whole, in framing their manifesto, to seek to retain the political flexibility to respond speedily to the positive evidence of success that I firmly expect to emerge in the new Parliament.
	So much for the Chancellor's concerns. Let me just mention two of my own concerns. The first, I know, is shared by the Secretary of State. Perhaps the biggest challenge now facing many universities is the introduction of the new two-year vocational degrees, with rising take-up for them and a high-quality learning experience for those who go into them. The chief justification for the massive expansion of higher education is that it will expand the skill base of the new knowledge economy more effectively than older forms of work-based vocational training. It is critical for the universities and the country that that expectation is met successfully.
	Turning to my other concern, I do not know whether the Secretary of State shares it, but it has an important bearing on the decisions that he will have to make soon about the Tomlinson proposals for the future of school qualifications. My concern is this: for many years, since as long ago as when I was a Minister, it has been fashionable to say that British education does well by the most academically gifted but lets down the rest. There may indeed have been some truth in that claim, and of course it is right that opportunities for every type of student should be increased and expanded. But there is a danger that we may make the mistake of taking for granted the quality of our offering to the brightest students. In a world economy that competes not only in skills but in brains, the whole country will suffer if we do not challenge and stretch our best young brains.
	That something is awry is very evident. We can see it very clearly if we look at the figures for the proportions of A grades at A-level in hard subjects that are achieved by students in the independent sector. Until 2000 the statistics on that were presented in a more transparent way than they are currently, and they showed that in that year the proportion of such students from independent schools was in the range between 42.1 and 46.1 per cent. in maths, chemistry, physics and biology. That is to say, in those subjects almost half the A grades at A-level went to students in independent schools. Yet the independent sector educates only 7 per cent. of our young people. There is clearly a lack of real academic challenge and aspiration in the state sector. There is a danger that the Tomlinson proposals will make the situation even worse and perhaps widen still further the academic gap between the public and the private sectors. To coin a phrase, we need academic challenge and aspiration "for the many, not the few".
	It is right that I should say a few words, in conclusion, about my own party's recent announcement of its policy for higher education. My message is simply this: it is still not too late to think again. There are two main elements in what is proposed, and both involve a regrettable sleight of hand. The Conservative party proposes to introduce vouchers for higher education. That is presented as a great boost to university freedom, but in any voucher system, or system of per capita funding, the critical questions are, "Who fixes the numbers of vouchers and their value?", and "Can the vouchers be topped up?" Since our universities already admit their own students and their teaching funding is already based on student numbers, there will be nothing new in them administering a voucher system; in fact they already do something of the kind. But as compared with the Government's policy, the Conservative proposals, I fear, represent a step back in terms of university freedoms.
	The effect of the Government's policy will be to enable each university to fix the value of its voucher for all its students and for each course, by allowing a top-up subject only to an upper limit. By contrast, the Conservative proposals will retain a system in which the centre decides both the number of the vouchers and their value. That will in practice mean the state deciding, first, how many students there should be in total; secondly, how many students there should be at each university; and, thirdly, how many students will be admitted to each course. The paradox is that the Government's policies represent a real liberalisation of higher education, while the Conservative proposals represent a real move back to "big state, small people".
	The second Conservative proposal is to commercialise the student loan system by charging a positive rate of interest for student loans, and to use the revenue from that to fund universities. I welcome the advocacy of a positive rate of interest; the idea was proposed by the Select Committee. The current level of taxpayer subsidy to graduates is not justified by any evidence that it really supports access. But the Conservative proposal envisages, on the one hand, an increased charge to graduates, and, on the other, the use of the funds arising from that
	"to improve the teaching infrastructure of universities".
	It does not, as advertised, retain the principle of free higher education.
	The fact is that a surcharge will be applied to the repayment of loans for student maintenance, and that revenue will be used to pay for university teaching. The proposal thus smuggles in a graduate contribution to university teaching costs—to use a phrase with which the shadow Secretary of State will be familiar, it smuggles in top-up fees "through the back door". As compared with the Government's much more transparent policy, that indirect approach is again to the detriment of university freedoms. Because the vehicle for the new charge is to be the financing of the student loan book, the sums arising will have to be centrally administered. The Conservative proposal is that that will be done at arm's length from Government by way of a new charitable foundation. But I do not think that there would be much difference in practice between such a foundation and the funding council system. The real difference between the Government's policy and the Conservative proposals is that the Government are giving an initiative to the universities, working from the bottom up, while the Conservatives would retain top-down resource allocation from the centre. Once again, it is a question of "big state, small people".
	To conclude, the future of our universities is not a central issue in electoral politics. Nevertheless, their strategic importance in the new global knowledge economy is immense. We look to the universities as a prime source of intellectual innovation and increasingly as a vehicle for flexible skills training. As things stand, it is clear that the Government understand that fundamental point, but I fear that that cannot yet be said of either of the two Opposition parties.

Alan Whitehead: It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr. Jackson), who is forthright and clear on a subject about which he knows a great deal. It is a matter of regret all round that he does not appear to have been centrally involved in the construction of his party's new higher education policy. Perhaps it would have been different if he had been.
	We have concentrated this afternoon on the details of higher education policy. I suspect that as we move into a general election campaign the significance of such detail will be forgotten, but it is extremely important, as hon. Members have said, that we get it right, because it will allow students to know whether they can afford university fees, and pay them in reasonable instalments over a period of time. As my hon. Friend the Minister said, payment should allow for career breaks and other personal choices. The detail of our policy will allow universities to plan their funding, tuition and research requirements in the medium and long term. That is the essence of recent debates in the often difficult passage of the Higher Education Act 2004, which made considerable progress in closing the gap, acknowledged by everyone, between the funding requirements of higher education tuition and research and student contributions. Under the new system, students will be able to pay those contributions from their future income and universities will have an income stream to meet their requirements. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) that that does not lead automatically to a closure of the gap, and I suspect that in future there will be a substantial debate about universities' research requirements. Nevertheless, as a result of the passage of the amended Act and the changes that it will introduce, the detail of the long-term situation is much clearer.
	Another hidden issue is access for students who have never considered going to university before. The proposals from both Opposition parties that we are considering this afternoon resile from the notion that about 50 per cent. of young people should go to university. It has been suggested that that figure was plucked out of thin air, but that is not true. According to projections, in future, about 50 per cent. of 18-year-olds leaving school or college will have the qualifications to go to university. The Opposition parties, however, would tell those students that, even though they have the qualifications to do so, they cannot go to university, which undermines a fundamental principle of higher education that the House should espouse. We must enable school leavers to go to university so that on graduation they can contribute to our economy and society. If we start to pick and choose students to reduce their overall number we will let those people down.
	In contrast to the Government's detailed policy on higher education, the proposals of the Opposition parties are bottles of snake oil, albeit two very different ones. The Conservative bottle is an enormous jeroboam. The ingredients of that concoction, however, do not add up, as has been said. Asking students to repay loans at commercial interest rates would make an unacceptable connection with a mortgage. Students will not have the choice of taking a career break and there will be no allowance for people who do not earn enough money to pay off the loan. As a result, the clock will be ticking on the interest that they have to pay and, as analysis shows, the money to be repaid will pile up. The idea of throwing out the loan book to match funding for endowments is absurd. The loan book, however, is a means of providing loans for students in the long-term. If we sell that long-term future to achieve a short-term fix for university funding we will simply find that the sums do not add up. The only conclusion to be drawn is that the books can only be made to balance by a radical contraction of student numbers, and that is the problem at the heart of the Conservative proposals.
	The Liberal Democrat proposals, as I said, are a different kind of snake oil, although it may be unfair to characterise them as such. They are a medicine that works in its own right, but the problem is that the same bottle of medicine has been promised to every single person in the GP's practice. My hon. Friend the Minister outlined a number of Liberal Democrat proposals that flow from the 50 per cent. tax increase that they would introduce. A little while ago, I attended a debate in the Chamber on Liberal Democrat proposals for local income tax in which they said that they could achieve the transition from council tax to local income tax by means of their 50 per cent. tax increase. They would introduce a cut in council tax, free long-term care for the elderly and various other things, including higher education reforms, some costed, others not, that go far beyond their central pledge to abolish tuition fees.
	The Liberal Democrats propose loans to cover maintenance, the reintroduction of maintenance grants of £2,000 a year for poor students, and free eye tests and prescriptions for students. They would like to restore housing benefit to students during the summer holidays. They want to pay fees for part-time students who, they say, will also be eligible on a pro rata basis for means-tested loans and grants. In addition, they would like to put more funds at the disposal of individual universities to help meet cases of unexpected hardship.
	Perhaps as a result of those additional internal uncosted commitments, the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis), whom I greatly respect for the tenacity and thoughtfulness of his contributions—

David Rendel: So do we.

Alan Whitehead: I am paying a straightforward compliment to the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough, not a barbed one. I imagine that it was precisely because of that thoughtfulness and commitment that he circulated a memo to members of his party last year, pointing out that there was a hole of between £1.5 billion and £2 billion in the Liberal Democrats' commitments that would need to be filled.
	The Liberal Democrats also seem to suggest not just that a number of students would study near their homes, but that, in the words of their leader, normally students would study at universities near their homes. That runs contrary to the idea that access means students have access to all courses on the basis of their qualifications, wherever those courses are. In an economy where the elite universities attracted the movement of students, most universities did not. A state college system would cut directly across the idea of access, which we consider important.

David Rendel: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman has forgotten that there are now as many part-time students as full-time students. As almost all those part-time students are studying from home, it is true even now that the majority of students are studying from home.

Alan Whitehead: Yes, I take the hon. Gentleman's point. It is true that a number of students are studying from home, and that a number of students who are doing full-time courses go to local universities. I take issue not with that fact, but with the apparent notion enshrined in the Liberal Democrat proposals that it would be normal to study at home—that pretty much everybody would study at home or at their local university. That is a considerable bridge over which Liberal Democrat policy leaps.

Barry Sheerman: I have heard it said several times today that the majority of students study at home. I have not seen that statistic and I should be interested to know whether it is legitimate. If a party believes that most students should stay at home and study rather than go away, it may suit that party to present that as the current situation. I should like to know the legitimacy of the statement that most students in higher education study at home. I have not seen it for myself.

Alan Whitehead: Neither have I. As I granted the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel), it is accepted that a substantial number of students, particularly part-time students, study at home. I have looked at the figures for students studying locally in my own city, at Southampton institute and Southampton university. There is an increasing trend, but it is by no means normal for students to study at home. It is by no means the case that most students study at home. As my hon. Friend says, to make that claim in order to bolster a policy that would greatly enhance that number is a bridge too far.
	The hon. Member for Newbury may not have stated that students would normally attend a college or university near to where they lived or worked, but his leader, the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Inverness, West (Mr. Kennedy), stated that in a speech to Liberal Future on 5 June 2003. The idea seems to be a fundamental part of the assumptions behind Liberal Democrat policy.
	Whether or not one agrees with everything in the package proposed by the Labour Government, the policy is clear for students and universities. It is clear about access and the long-term future of universities, students and access. My concern this afternoon is to contrast that with two policies that, in varying ways, mortgage the future for the present. We need look no further than the extraordinary quote in the motion—I have not seen many such quotes in motions—which states that the
	"Times Higher Education Supplement/Opinion Panel Research opinion poll of students . . . finds that 47 per cent. support the Liberal Democrats, 20 per cent. support Labour and 23 per cent. are backing the Conservatives".
	That would largely explain the wildly over-extensive and substantially uncosted prospectus that the Liberal Democrats are presenting to students. Those who do not look at the detail may be taken in by it. It may be a clear election ploy to try and enhance the support of those people, but because the debate is all about details, it is essential to stick with the details. Those who look at them will realise that we should not mortgage the future of higher education for quick fixes. We should make sure that higher education is funded not just for current students who are voting in polls organised by The Times Higher Education Supplement, but for students in the next 30, 40 or 50 years who may benefit from their university and benefit the country, and for universities of which we can be proud.

Alistair Burt: I appreciate the chance to take part in the debate and will do my best to be brief, as one or two others still want to get in. Some of my remarks derive from the time when I occupied the Front-Bench position now held by my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) as shadow higher education spokesman, before I became batman to two successive leaders of the Conservative party—though a batman with no aspirations to climb on to a ledge of the palace. Some of my remarks are sourced from my continuing fellowship of the Industry and Parliament Trust and Universities UK. I am grateful to the universities of Holloway, Kingston and Bristol and to Imperial college London for the access they have given me over the past couple of years, though I stress that the opinions I express and the comments I make are mine, rather than theirs.
	I warmly welcome the Minister to his position. We have known each other as friends for many years. He has always carried out his ministerial duties ably and competently—it says in my notes—and I see no reason why that should not be the case in his present position. We know that he will put into it all his endeavour and effort.
	I strongly welcome the debate, as much as I welcome the change and development that have taken place in higher education since the 1960s. That more people go to university now is obviously good news, and that universities are different in their style and in what they provide for both graduates and undergraduates is also to be welcomed. Universities are not as they were. In most respects, that is to be welcomed, although one or two things are not so good and candid friends need to say so.
	There are many issues in higher education that we could debate on the basis of the motion, but I shall deal with a theme that has emerged from one or two comments. My hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr. Jackson) first raised it and it is a point not truly brought out in the motion or the amendment. My colleagues have a better grasp of the issue—that is, the independence of the higher education sector.
	The Liberal Democrat motion and the Government amendment imply that higher education is and will remain almost solely a creature of Government. Higher education and Government should, of course, form a partnership. The nation has expectations and interests of which higher education must take account, but a too close, too dependent relationship between higher education and Government is not a good thing.
	I shall pick out a couple of examples of that relationship being overdone in this country. The regulation and direction of funding through the Higher Education Funding Council has been commented on. Although they may be improving, universities still complain, and they are right to do so on occasion. Not only is the task of applying for funds time-consuming and frustrating, but almost all funds come with strings. Universities long for a system that rewards their professionalism and integrity with earned autonomy by which they can use money to fit in with their long-term plans and aspirations. Subsequent irresponsibility can be punished, which is what random inspections are for, but more trust and autonomy would be warmly welcomed.
	I therefore welcome my hon. Friends' development of our ideas for greater autonomy by changing the funding mechanism for universities and encouraging more voluntary giving. Voluntary giving raises some challenges, which are set out in the excellent paper prepared by Professor Eric Thomas of Bristol university earlier in the year. If we could get the £600 million to which he and my hon. Friends refer, which works out at £400 per student, it would be of great assistance.
	Of course, money will not come in equally to all institutions, and I recognise the fears expressed on that point, but two things follow. First, as Professor Thomas makes clear, endowment and voluntary income does not replace money from students or taxpayers, so room exists to correct imbalances, if they occur. Secondly, and most importantly, we cannot and should not expect all universities to receive equal resources, because they are not all equal, in the sense that they do not all tackle the same role in a modern higher education sector. Some can and must conduct blue-sky research. Some want to run courses for the sheer hell of it, and some students take those courses for the same reason.
	The Secretary of State for Education and Skills made some unfortunate remarks suggesting that education for its own sake is not valid and that universities should be more vocationally driven. We are right to reject that proposition. Somebody, somewhere should defend education for its own sake, and it should be the Secretary of State. This country needs a tier of universities that receive wholehearted support and that are recognised as being of world stature. They must compete internationally and draw the best researchers and teachers here in order to deliver the highest quality skills to our students, which benefits everyone. Such universities are likely to be better funded than others.
	Not all universities can fulfil such a role, and others of them may perform different jobs with a degree of excellence: teaching may take precedence over research; care for students who need the greatest help may be of the highest quality; and relationships with particular industries may ensure that a university supplies a niche market. Individual departments of excellence can and do flourish in virtually all universities, and a system that enables those individual jewels to be recognised and supported is required.

Phil Willis: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Alistair Burt: No; the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) wants to speak.
	Not recognising the difference between universities and seeking to hold back those of the highest intellectual and research capacity because not all are equal is bogus and likely to inspire a complete breakaway by a handful of universities from the rest, which would be to no one's advantage. Greater autonomy will lessen that risk.
	Who goes to the university is the second area in which the Government threaten independence. My message to the Government is simple: leave it to the universities. All universities that I have visited in the past three years are searching for the best students, and no admissions tutor is unaware of the effort required by a student from a difficult background to achieve top grades at a school that may not have everything. Universities know how to make allowances and do not need the Government to set quotas for them.
	The more the Government go on about that matter, the more likely it is that individual injustices will take place: youngsters will not be judged on their merits, individual rights will become subordinated to group rights and public confidence in the honesty and integrity of the admissions system will be fatally compromised. The issue is not unrelated to the Government's aspiration for more people to go to university, which is good, and their 50 per cent. quota, which is not good.
	Interfering with independence is dangerous in two respects. First, continued emphasis suggests to the nation that only higher education is worth having and that those who pursue further education, and even those who learn on the job, are somehow second class, as are those who teach such courses. I absolutely reject that notion. We cannot truly talk of "parity of esteem" for post-16 destinations if we give such an impression.
	Secondly, a quota increases the likelihood that someone will be encouraged to take a course they do not want, in a university that they do not want to go to, in order to fulfil the quota and ensure that a university stays in business. That neglect of the interests of the individual student, who is considered as a commodity to fill a quota, is sad and wrong.
	The pressure on universities to widen and increase access and to make allowances for quality runs the risk of taking the spotlight off secondary education, which my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage mentioned, and its responsibility to ensure the best outcomes and grades for its students.
	The problem of ensuring that a strong group of applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds is ready for higher education is not solely the responsibility of the universities, and their efforts to address that are helped substantially when secondary schools act in partnership with them and increasingly support such efforts.
	Let us take on the next phase of higher education. Let us give universities as much autonomy as we can and a light regulatory regime. Let us give students the sort of support that my hon. Friends propose by ensuring that they do not pay fees, cutting their debt and enabling them to borrow enough to live on at university—a message that was missed out of the Government's original White Paper. I strongly support my colleagues' package of measures, which is designed in the best interests of universities and students.

Simon Hughes: I am conscious that we are coming to the end of the debate, and I am grateful for just a few minutes to put one substantive point to the Minister, whom I too welcome to his post.
	My constituency does not have a great tradition of higher education: that was not generally what people from the old boroughs of Southwark and Bermondsey did. The one notable exception was the great teaching hospital of Guy's, which won prizes around the world and had dental and medical schools that were pre-eminent for a century. After that, things moved on. We had Borough polytechnic, which became South Bank polytechnic and is now London South Bank university, which is doing very well in terms of widening access. We have students living in premises south of the river who go to the London School of Economics and Westminster university.
	I was prompted to make this contribution by figures that alarmed me when I got them from the then Minister in July; I mentioned them in my intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis). They suggest that something is badly wrong as regards opening up access and encouraging people to go on to higher education in London, our capital city. I have since asked questions relating to the other parts of England, and those figures will be available when we come back after the next break.
	The figures show some worrying trends that I want to put to the Minister. They relate to the 32 London boroughs—the City of London is excluded—and cover the years 1996 to 2003, the last year for which figures are available. In the past year, 20 of the 32 boroughs experienced a decline in the percentage of students going on to higher education. Four local authorities—this is not a party political point—have experienced a decline over the whole period, which means that a smaller percentage go to university now than in 1996. They are Camden, with a 4.5 per cent. drop; Hammersmith and Fulham, with a very small 0.5 per cent. drop; Kensington and Chelsea, with an 8.5 per cent. drop; and Richmond, with a 1 per cent. drop.
	There are huge variations in the level of attainment. In two boroughs, only 12 per cent. of school leavers go on to higher education: Barking, which is a traditional working-class area, but an outer London borough; and Hackney, an inner-city borough with all the educational problems that we have heard about. At the other end of the scale is Harrow, where more than 40 per cent. of students go on to higher education. In 1996, the figure was about 30 per cent.—there has been a huge increase in that relatively affluent borough.
	Six local authorities have experienced good increases since 1996 in the numbers of students going on to higher education. When I list them, hon. Members will see that, again, I am not making a party political point. They are Harrow, with 9 per cent.; Newham, with 8.5 per cent.; Redbridge, with 9 per cent.; Waltham Forest, with 8 per cent.; Wandsworth, with 8 per cent.; and, I am pleased to say, my own borough of Southwark, with 8 per cent.
	Those are the best performers. Overall, however, the London figures have started to turn down rather than up for the first time in seven years. For the first time, we have an indication that people in Greater London are not going on to higher education—I am not referring to the 50 per cent. target to which the Government aspire—because the figure for the capital is less than 25 per cent.
	The best conclusion that I can reach—I do not draw on a great amount of research; I am happy for the Government to conduct the research—ties in with conversations in my constituency and anecdotal evidence that I have picked up across London. More and more people say that they will not go to university because of the cost and risk of debt.
	I am not trying to bolster my party's case for the sake of it. As a London Member of Parliament who hopefully knows the subject relatively well, I simply want to share the fact that the evidence on the ground suggests a worrying trend. If that is the case, although we have the Higher Education Act 2004, the orders have not been laid and I hope that the Government can think again, not only about whether they insist on breaking their earlier commitment but about whether it would be wise in the foreseeable future to increase the contributions that students are asked to make to tuition fees. There is a danger that the people who need university most may be most put off and that the opportunity for widening access to which we all say that we aspire may not be fulfilled.

David Rendel: It is nice to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes). It is the first time that I have done that, and I am pleased to have that opportunity and to welcome the Minister again to his new position. I had a chance to do that yesterday in Committee and I am glad to do so today on the Floor of the House. I look forward to further debates in the next few weeks and months.
	I start by making one point about Conservative policy that has not yet been raised. It is an interesting issue, and I hope that Conservative Members can answer my point. The Conservative party states in its paper that under its scheme the average debt with which graduates end their university careers will be lower by £9,000 than under the current Labour scheme. I take the difference to be caused by the fact that, under the Conservative scheme, students will not have to take out a loan to pay three times £3,000 of tuition fees, which they must do under the Government's top-up fee scheme. That is the only logic that I can perceive behind claiming that the debt would be £9,000 lower. If that is the only difference, Conservative Members appear to be assuming that the amount of the loan that is taken out for normal living costs will be precisely the same under both schemes— some £10,500 on average at the end of a normal undergraduate career. That means that the Conservatives have failed to increase the figure by the extra interest that they would charge before the student begins to pay off the loan in the April of the year after graduation. That implies a subsidy.

Chris Grayling: I am delighted to say that the models that we put together and published last week include interest on the debt that accrues at university under both the Government scheme and our own.

David Rendel: I am delighted to hear that, but I am a little surprised, because the difference between the figures given is only £200. That implies that the amount that the Conservatives have accepted as the extra interest on the debt in the period before it starts to be paid off is only £200. Given that the real rate of interest that the scheme implies is some 4 per cent., and that the undergraduate is expected to borrow approximately £3,500 a year, only £200 seems a small amount of interest. I cannot get the sums to add up. The figure should be closer to £1,500. Some questions remain.
	Another aspect of the Conservative scheme is that it raises the maximum amount that can be borrowed by students. Conservative Members must therefore assume that at least some students will take out more than they are allowed under the Labour scheme. Surely that implies that the average loan will be greater, and therefore a greater average amount must be repaid. There are therefore two fundamental concerns.

Tim Collins: I would like to make it clear that the extra amount that students could borrow would not displace money that they were borrowing at 3 per cent. interest. It would displace money that they are presently borrowing at credit card rates, which can be anything up to 18 or 20 per cent.

David Rendel: I understand that point. Nevertheless, the amount that the average graduate could borrow would be higher under the Conservatives' scheme, and would therefore take longer to pay off.
	I would like to turn briefly to some of the points that have been raised during the debate. When we talk about the extra money to be raised through income tax on earnings above £100,000, we have made it clear again and again that that money would pay for three things, and three things only: the higher education changes that we intend to make; free personal care for the elderly; and some help for local authorities to keep down their council tax bills. Those are the only things that will be paid for out of that money.
	Several hon. Members have mentioned the difference between the United States and elsewhere, and how US universities have been able to encourage a lot more private endowment. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis) made the important point that public spending on higher education in the US represents a higher proportion of gross domestic product than it does here: roughly 0.9 per cent., compared with 0.7 per cent., according to figures produced by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. That makes it clear that it is the public commitment to higher education—the fact that the public authorities demonstrably believe in the importance and value of higher education—that encourages the extra endowment from the private sector. To suggest, therefore, that endowment from the private sector could take the place of public funding would be fatal, as it would almost certainly lead to a reduction in the endowment coming in, rather than an increase.
	I made a point in an intervention on the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Collins) about the bureaucracy involved in his national scholarship scheme. He simply did not answer my question, so I shall raise the matter again. If the Conservatives introduced a national scholarship scheme, someone would have to administer it, and the amount of bureaucracy would be far worse if it had to do be administered on a student-by-student basis. Each student who gained a place at university would have to ask the university exactly how much money was involved, then apply to someone—it is not clear who—to ensure that they got that money to give to the university. It would be a hugely bureaucratic system, and I suggest that it would cost an awful lot more than the current one.
	The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale also seems to have a conflict between two ideas. One is that it would be entirely up to the universities to give places to whomever they wanted, and that they would then be able to get scholarships to pay for those places; and the other is that a minimum proportion of those scholarships would be allocated to certain subjects. Quite how that would be administered, alongside the universities having complete freedom to give places to whomever they wanted, in whatever subjects, I fail to understand.
	A fundamental point about the Conservatives' policy is illustrated by the fact that the hon. Gentleman failed to answer the criticism made by the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough that the Tories' scheme would inevitably involve money being taken from the poor and given to the rich. That would happen because the poorer graduates—those in less well-paid jobs—would take much longer to pay off their debts, so the bulk of the money that would replace the current fees would come from them.

Tim Collins: Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that under his proposals there would still be loans that had to be repaid at the end of they day? Under his scheme, someone who went into a well-paid job could pay off their loan faster than someone who went into a less well-paid job.

David Rendel: Yes, but since the increase is only to be at the rate of inflation, there would be no real effect there. That is clearly an important difference.
	There have been various claims that the Tories were going to pay the capital amounts demanded by universities, and that we were not. Because of the possible early introduction of our higher rate of income tax, we would be providing a lot more money to the universities than the current Labour scheme, and the Conservatives are quite wrong to pretend that that is not the case.
	The most fundamental criticism to be made about the Government and the Conservatives involves their lack of vision about higher education in general. Ministers come up with only one answer to the question, "What is higher education for?" They say that it is there to serve the needs of the economy by creating a skilled work force. They believe that the kinds of study that are not deemed economically useful and fail to meet a consumer demand are not worthy of support. We agree that higher education is vital for the economy, but we do not believe that knowledge is valuable for that reason alone: it is of intrinsic worth both to the individual and to society as a whole. We regret that Labour and the Conservatives are now uniting around the position that the value of studies is determined by the number of student customers that a course can attract, or by some centrally determined test of economic usefulness.
	Let me give one example of how the position now taken by the Government and by the Conservatives can be spectacularly short-sighted. How many people were arguing before 11 September 2001 that there was an urgent and pressing need to train more people who can understand and converse with the Muslim world? A recent report by the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies argued that we are not training enough people with knowledge of the middle east and competence in Arabic. Clive Holes, professor of the study of the contemporary Arabic world at the university of Oxford, argues that we are seeing
	"the gradual loss of a national resource for teaching Arabic and other Middle Eastern languages, and . . . because of the concomitant staff cuts, the loss of expert advice which should be available to government, the diplomatic and intelligence communities, and business."
	That is the logic of the market as envisaged by the Secretary of State and the Conservatives.
	There is now a significant divide in politics on the future of higher education. The choice is between those who want to tax learning—whether through fees or interest rate charges, which applies to both the other main parties—and those who believe that it is the duty of public policy to ensure that every individual is able to expand the humanist wall that we need in our community. The Conservatives are advocating a policy that unashamedly redistributes wealth from the poor to the rich—socialism for the wealthy—and the Government, too, have promoted a policy that disadvantages the less affluent. Their desperate war of concession and reassurance during the Higher Education Bill debates, promising grants and bursaries all over the place, was a tacit admission that that is the case. If tuition fees and top-up fees are so benign in their consequence, why did Ministers decide that all those sticking plasters were necessary?
	The Liberal Democrats therefore have nothing of which to be jealous in the other two parties' policies. Our position is principled and consistent with our party's values and history. It is also popular with students, university staff and parents, which cannot be said of our opponents' policies. One of the most striking comments in recent days was that of the National Union of Students president Kat Fletcher, who said:
	"Though the Tories stood by the NUS in our battle over tuition fees, we now recognise that their promises for a fairer funding situation for higher education were merely rhetoric."
	A policy that is principled and popular and will create a higher education system fit for the 21st century is a policy that we will be proud to take to the country.
	Let there be no doubt: this will be one of the deciding factors of the general election. Both Labour and Conservative will be standing on platforms that make those who go to university pay for the costs of the education they receive. We have a different answer. Because society as a whole benefits from the highest levels of education, the cost of that education should be met from taxation, and in particular, we would replace fee income with taxation of earnings above £100,000. As a result of the chasm that differentiates our policy from the policies of both the other two parties, we are looking forward to the next election with relish.

Kim Howells: I have seven minutes—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I must remind the hon. Gentleman that he needs the leave of the House.

Kim Howells: I am dreadfully sorry, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I wrote that down on my brief in thick black handwriting.
	With the leave of the House, I now have about six minutes.
	May I begin by wholeheartedly endorsing the support voiced for the intrinsic value of university education, although I must tell hon. Members that I still grind my teeth occasionally at having once lost out in a shortlist to someone who was studying the effects on warfare of horsemanship in 13th-century Castile? I have my doubts about whether my subject of research was much more useful—

Patrick McLoughlin: What was it?

Kim Howells: It was the coal industry, which the hon. Gentleman will know about.
	This has been an interesting and informative debate, which has made clear the depth of feeling in the House about higher education. My esteemed predecessor as Minister, now Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, would have enjoyed the debate, because it has underlined the importance of ensuring that we get this right. I was especially encouraged to hear expressions of support from both sides of the House for maintaining what my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) referred to as the commitment to excellence in the quality of teaching and research in our universities. He posed some central and difficult questions about how we can ensure that the highest-quality research—the excellence to which we have referred—is funded properly, and located throughout the regions and nations of this country. Our policy remains to concentrate research funding on the best institutions, but we do not propose to take all funding away from 4-rated departments, for example. In 2003–04, there was only a moderate reduction—about £20 million, or 2 per cent.—in the overall research budget of the Higher Education Funding Council for England for such departments. HEFCE will continue to provide £17.5 million in capability funding for departments rated 3A and 3B in 2004–05 to support the seven emerging areas in the next research assessment exercise.
	The hon. Member for Wantage (Mr. Jackson) highlighted some of the problems with his own Front Bench's proposals. One interested me particularly: the proposal to replace HEFCE's funding arrangements and tuition fees with a voucher arrangement. Let me add to his timely and constructive questions one or two of my own.
	The Conservatives do not say how they will control the number of places. At present we do that through HEFCE. If a university recruits too many students, grant will be lost. How will the Conservatives manage with a voucher system? Will they ration the number of vouchers that they hand out? If they do not, they will have written a blank cheque: they will be giving a voucher to anyone who is admitted to university. How can they possibly do that, and control public spending? They will have to ration the vouchers—but how? How can they say who is worthy and who is not? Will that not amount to taking centralised control of the university admission process?
	The hon. Gentleman posed those questions in his usual elegant fashion, but I am afraid that none of us has received answers of any description, elegant or otherwise.
	Maintaining and building on the success of higher education is essential, not only for students and graduates but for our economy and society as a whole. Just as a successful higher education can bring great benefits, making the wrong decisions, or no decisions at all, could cause great damage. I am confident that the vision set out in the 2003 White Paper, "The Future of Higher Education", and subsequently enacted in the Higher Education Act 2004, is the right vision to deliver successful higher education. It represents a carefully considered and decisive package for reform, and for the creation of a higher education sector that will stand the tests of time and international competition.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) reminded us that higher education plays such an important part in any modern economy that we must be absolutely clear and precise about how we pay for it. He challenged the Opposition parties to give us that precision, because the Government face tough spending choices. The country's future economic success depends on our getting higher education policy right. There can, indeed, be few more important topics. It is not realistic to think that now, with 44 per cent. of 18 to 30-year-olds going into higher education, we can fund it in the same way as we did in the mid-1960s, when the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis) and I went into higher education. Less than 8 per cent. of our cohort did so then. We are living in an entirely different world now—one in which we must get more and more students into higher education.
	We accept that going for tuition fees was not an easy option, and, as we were reminded by my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test, it is not a popular one. We do not care to play that game. He was right to cite figures showing the great popularity of the Liberal Democrat policy, but it is a different matter to try to pay for it. In government it is necessary to make real decisions. The Liberal Democrats will never face that opportunity, so they can say what they like. It is, of course, one long wish list.
	We think that our policy is the right one, and the only realistic way forward, and so do many of our competitors. In Europe, for example, universities in Germany are pressing the federal Government to change the constitution to allow fees; the Netherlands is already going ahead with tuition fee pilots; and even in Sweden, which has traditionally taken the position of having high public spending financed by high taxation, voices are beginning to be heard from the higher education sector arguing in favour of fees. Then there is the OECD. Its UK economic survey of 2004 praised the Government's approach to higher education, stating that it could provide "a role model" for other European countries.
	The message is very clear. If our economy is to remain competitive, our higher education must remain competitive—and that means fees. We either face up to that or we face long-term decline as a nation. Put that way, it is not so tough a choice; it is precisely what we have to do.

Question put, That the original words stand part of the Question:—
	The House divided: Ayes 55, Noes 386.

Question accordingly negatived.
	Question, That the proposed words be there added, put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 31 (Questions on amendments):—
	The House divided: Ayes 257, Noes 185.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	Mr. Deputy Speaker forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.
	Resolved,
	That this House welcomes the passage of the Higher Education Act 2004; approves the further steps the Government is taking to widen participation, including the establishment of the Office for Fair Access, and enhanced bursaries; welcomes the improvement in support for part-time students being introduced by the Government, including the first ever grant package available from this autumn; rejects the Liberal Democrat policy of abolition of tuition fees, depriving universities of a dedicated income stream; congratulates the Government on maintaining fair and affordable loan repayment terms and rejects the policies proposed by the Official Opposition which would require those graduates who can least afford it to pay the most for their higher education; recognises the need to maintain UK universities at the forefront of world research and to equip the UK workforce with the high-level skills needed to compete in the global marketplace; congratulates the Government on record levels of investment in higher education, to almost £10 billion by 2005–06, with a 9 per cent. increase in research funding to 2007–08, additional income from variable fees, and further increases in Government funding to be announced shortly; looks forward to the introduction of a £2,700 maintenance grant for new students from 2006 alongside the improved student support package available from fee deferral, increased maintenance loans and loan write-offs for new students after 25 years; and welcomes the impact these policies will have on encouraging students from less well-off backgrounds to consider entering higher education.

Older Women

Mr. Deputy Speaker: We now come to the debate on the impact of Government policy on older women. Mr. Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

Steve Webb: I beg to move,
	That this House notes that women have historically always been the poorest pensioners and believes that they will continue to be so unless urgent action is taken; further notes that the average basic state pension entitlement of a newly retired woman is barely £50 per week; recognises that women's state pension rights are frequently damaged by periods of caring for children or people with disabilities and by periods of low paid employment; further notes that the improved rights for carers under the state second pension do not apply to women with children over the age of five, do not apply to carers not in receipt of carers benefits, will take decades to be fully implemented, and will still produce a pension that leaves most recipients needing a means-tested supplement during their retirement; condemns the policy of the Government to force pensioners to surrender their pension books, a policy which affects women in particular; expresses concern that age discrimination within the NHS means that many older women are not invited for routine breast cancer screening; expresses further concern that the Government has failed to abolish mixed-sex wards in all hospital trusts, a practice which many older patients find particularly distressing; and calls on the Government to introduce a decent state pension, based on a citizenship requirement, provide real choices for older people, take steps to tackle age discrimination, and put an end to mixed-sex wards.
	The Government's amendment on such occasions is always a good giggle. It is always a good laugh to see why the problem that we have all found in our constituencies and heard about from the people to whom we speak is actually not only not a problem, but a triumph for the Government. Today's Government amendment is no exception to that.
	We have sought to bring before the House the failures of the Government to deal with the needs of older women, in particular, and our motion highlights pensions, but also issues relating to the health service. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey (Sandra Gidley) will catch your eye later in the debate, Mr. Deputy Speaker, so that she can focus her remarks on those issues.
	I shall concentrate especially on the position of women and pensions.
	I start by agreeing with the Government. I shall not do that too often in the rest of my contribution, but let me start with a note of consensus, because we know that our electors want consensus on pensions. At the start of the amendment, the Government ask us to congratulate them on the fact that their pensions Green Paper was the first ever to include a chapter on the needs of women pensioners. It is good news that they finally included such a chapter in response to years of campaigning by the Liberal Democrats. The chapter was a list of problems facing women pensioners. The Government are good at listing problems—so good, in fact, that they produced quite a long chapter detailing the problems. One might reasonably assume that after listing the problems they might have felt the need to do something about them, but that aspect of the equation has not happened, because precious little of what came forward from the Green Paper was of benefit to older women.
	The Government's amendment goes on to call for further praise for the Government because they are committed
	"to report next year on the pensions position of women".
	As those who follow the minutiae of such matters will know, the hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) moved an amendment in the Committee that considered the Pensions Bill to get such a report, to which the Government graciously acceded. The Government now want praise for the fact that they will report on the pensions position of women, but they had no intention of doing so until a Labour Member made such a suggestion. The argument in the rest of the amendment must be pretty thin if its strongest claims are that there was a chapter about problems and that there will be a report.
	The essence of the problem that we are trying to address is that women are the poor relations on pensions. If pensioners feel like second-class citizens, women pensioners are often third-class citizens. As the Equal Opportunities Commission puts it, given that women form two thirds of the pensioner population, if we do not get pensions right, women are the ones who will suffer disproportionately. It is true that there has been a historical problem and that the old-fashioned system, which was based on the assumption that men worked and women stayed at home to bring up children, meant that women got a poor deal from pensions, but it is a myth that that is all ancient history. I want to dispel that myth today, because far from being over, the ancient history is with us today, and it is set to remain with us for generations to come unless the Government get serious on the issue.
	I have figures about women who retire today, rather than extreme cases of women who have been retired for decades and lived their lives in a different era. A typical woman who retires today will receive a combined income from state pensions of £65 a week. A typical man retiring today will receive an income from state pensions of £105 a week, so there is a gap of £40. I do not want to be harsh on the Government because I am in a consensual mood today, so I praise them because the figures that I cited are better than those for the year before. The gap between men and women closed by 40p a week between 2002 and 2003, so that represents progress. At that rate of progress, I calculate that it will take a century before the gap of £40 closes. Liberal Democrat Members are patient and realise that progress takes time, but we think that 100 years is a little too long to wait to close the gap between men and women, especially for today's pensioners.
	What is the origin of the problem and what can we do about it? A typical newly retired woman in 2003 drew a basic pension of £53.90 a week, but the full basic pension was in the high £70s. How did that situation arise? One would assume that, by the start at the 21st century, women who worked would have protected their pension rights and those who looked after children would have protected their pension rights. Why did they not receive full basic pensions? One problem is that women who retire now base their pensions on a working and caring life that typically goes back to the 1960s. They carry the baggage of a system that was generated in the post-war era on the assumption that they did not work and that that did not matter because they just depended on their husbands.
	So although in the 1980s we had a system whereby when a woman was bringing up children, her pension rights were protected, many women retiring today do not benefit from that system and retire on a pathetically inadequate pension.
	One reason the Liberal Democrats have taken the view that we need to act quickly on pensions is that this injustice has gone on for too long. We cannot wait for decades for all those historical anomalies to work their way through the system because, frankly, many of the women that we are talking about will not be around to see the benefit. That is why our priority, as reflected in the motion, is a pension increase, particularly for the oldest pensioners. They simply cannot wait.
	That contrasts with the approach taken by the Conservatives, who have said that there should be limited, across-the-board increases for all pensioners proportionate to the pension that they draw, which means that women, once again, will get a raw deal. If a woman draws a smaller pension, an increase proportionate to that amount will be smaller than for a man. How can we put up with that discrimination any longer? We have a wholly inadequate basic pension, the value of which has been eroding for a quarter of a century relative to earnings, and we have to take urgent steps to deal with it because it is women who lose out.
	In their amendment to the motion the Government are saying, "You don't need to worry about that because there is the state second pension"—what used to be called SERPS—"and that is good news for women." In fact, Ministers have been known to say that 20 million people will benefit from that pension. The state second pension is their response to the question, "What have you done for women?" Looking at the figures, I found that the typical woman retiring in September 2003 draws a SERPS or state second pension of a grand total of £9.73 a week; the typical man draws £22 from that source. That pension, which is meant to be the answer to the problem of women, is worth less than a tenner to the typical woman.
	Why is it that, as ever, there is a huge gap between the Government's rhetoric on pensions and the reality for women pensioners? First, the Government say that women should have their pension rights protected while they are bringing up children, but only until their children are five. After that, the Government expect them to go out to work and earn above the earnings limit, and if they do not, or if they do part-time work, their pension rights are not protected. The new second pension, which is supposed to be the answer to all the problems, does not help women in that position, even starting from now. That seems wrong to us.
	Secondly, the Government say that for the first time they are protecting the pension rights of carers, and anyone drawing the carer's allowance receives credits towards the second-tier pension. However, there are hundreds of thousands of women out there, doing caring work, who do not satisfy the 35-hours-a-week rule or the test that the Government set them. If a woman spends 20 hours a week caring for an elderly relative, and another 10 hours a week doing a rather pathetically paid part-time job in which she does not pay national insurance, the Government's response is that none of that matters. None of that has value in their eyes because none of it earns a woman a penny in pension rights.
	This is the critical point: the history of pensions has been that the only thing that the state values is paid work above a certain level, and we are saying that that injustice has to stop. We as a society must surely value people who bring up children and care for elderly relatives, and we must surely value those who do a couple of part-time jobs, neither of which qualifies them to pay national insurance, leaving them without any pension rights.

Vera Baird: May I take the hon. Gentleman back to his point about carers? It is relatively easy to decide when a woman is at home caring for a child because one can see the child. At the moment, what triggers a woman's receipt of a carer's credit is the fact that the person for whom she is caring receives the disability living allowance, which requires 35 hours of care. That is a very clear trigger that makes it easy to attribute the credit. If we are to allow part-time caring and part-time work to be taken into account—which I accept is right and is what, in reality, many women do—how will we trigger the award of the credit? That is a very difficult issue.

Steve Webb: The hon. and learned Lady makes a critical point, and suggests why we concluded that the answer to the problem of national insurance is not to invent increasingly complex ways of plugging all the gaps. Instead, we should sweep the current arrangements away and base pension entitlement on citizenship. She is quite right—if we give money to full-time carers, there are practical problems in working out what we would give to part-time carers or people with two low-paid jobs and so on. I pay tribute to her and organisations such as the Fawcett Society, Age Concern and the Equal Opportunities Commission for raising those issues, but I disagree about their strategy which, although it may be realistic about how far the Government are willing to go, would plug the myriad gaps in the system. However, if one did so, the pension would still be 100 per cent. inadequate and operating it, as she suggested, would be complex and difficult.
	The Liberal Democrats want the money that is currently spent on bureaucracy, qualifications, rules and regulations to be spent on pensions. It should not be devoted to bureaucracy but should go to front-line pensions. My response to the hon. and learned Lady, therefore, is that we should not devise ever more complex rules to bring more people into the net. Instead, we should say that citizens who satisfy a test of residency are entitled to a decent pension.

Frank Field: The women of this country should know exactly what the hon. Gentleman's policy is. He will know that a large number of women did not opt for the married woman's pension, but voluntarily paid the full contribution. His reply to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) suggested that the Liberal Democrats would abolish those distinctions and qualifications, so is he telling those hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of women who deliberately did not choose the lower rate but wanted to pay for the full pension that they were foolish to do so?

Steve Webb: Women who paid the full stamp currently qualify for a wholly inadequate basic state pension of less than £80 a week. We propose a citizen's pension, which would be paid regardless of someone's contribution record at a rate of £105 a week for the over-75s. We would not make a distinction between people who had paid different rates, people who had been carers or had brought up children, but the women highlighted by the right hon. Gentleman would be substantially better off than at present. Like me, he knows that many women made the wrong choice about whether or not to pay the full stamp—they were misled or did not have accurate information and have retired in penury. We believe that that injustice needs to be put right.

Frank Field: Would not the Liberal Democrats' position be stronger if they dropped all that old claptrap about a citizen's pension and merely said that they are going into the election with a strong policy on a significant increase for the oldest pensioners? That might win them support in very different places around the country.

Steve Webb: The right hon. Gentleman's antipathy to the concept of a citizen's pension may derive from the fact that he has never had any time for shirkers. He has a horror of people who, for want of a better phrase, I shall call surfers, who spend their entire life surfing and draw a full pension on retirement because they are citizens. However, the citizen's pension does not allow people to be surfers or shirkers. We will not allow them to draw social security benefits or credits unless they satisfy rules on searching for work or unless they make a contribution. The people whom the right hon. Gentleman is worried about are bound by the present system to seek work and so on if they want support. It is therefore inconceivable that someone could spend their entire adult life shirking and drawing money from the state before receiving a pension on retirement. The citizen's pension proposal is therefore not vulnerable to the problems which, he believes, would affect a citizen's income proposal. That is not what we are proposing at all.

Frank Field: I am merely suggesting that there is a more attractive way of presenting the hon. Gentleman's policies. It is important that we achieve agreement, so it is not a question of whether or not we go down the citizenship pension route. Nobody in their right mind thinks that people will deliberately make certain decisions so that after 15 years of receiving a pension they will qualify for other benefits under the Liberal Democrat proposal. It is not a question of citizenship—the greatest need is among the oldest pensioners, and that issue unites all the parties. Talking about citizenship pensions or non-citizenship pensions divides our forces instead of uniting them.

Steve Webb: As the right hon. Gentleman knows, we agree about the particular needs of the older pensioners, and I am happy to concur with him on that. Suppose, however, that we were to add £25 to whatever pension a pensioner over 75 happened to draw, many of the women to whom I am referring draw such abjectly pathetic pensions that even £25 on top would still leave them below the poverty line and needing to claim the sort of means-tested benefits on which the right hon. Gentleman wants less reliance.
	In other words, the right hon. Gentleman and I share a view, first, that the older pensioners are particularly needy and deserving of further support. Secondly, he and I want to reduce reliance on means-testing. My worry about his proposal is that if we had an across-the-board increase for the over-75s but left the contribution-based pension intact—not the citizenship-based one—there would still have to be quite a lot of means-testing, which both he and I want to get rid of.

Nigel Waterson: As I understand it, the hon. Gentleman's proposal for a citizen's pension depends crucially on a residence test, but I have unaccountably been unable to find any details of how that test would be defined or how it would work. Can he assist me?

Steve Webb: Certainly. There are already residence tests of the sort we have in mind in the social security system. The hon. Gentleman will be familiar with the pension—I think it is the category D pension, although I am open to correction on that—payable from the age of 80 onwards, which is non-contributory in the existing system and is subject only to a residence test. What we have in mind are residence tests of the sort that are already in the system, but one of the problems is that the data available to us as an Opposition party, which would enable us to come up with a precise definition, are very limited. We know that the general approach would be that people could not come straight off the boat at Dover and claim a pension—that is not how it would work—but would need to have established a significant connection with the United Kingdom, including in the period up to retirement. We will consider the exact details in due course—perhaps at my earliest opportunity, should I form part of the first Cabinet of my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Inverness, West (Mr. Kennedy).

Kevin Brennan: If that is the hon. Gentleman's proposal, is it not wrong to call it a citizen's pension? Does that not mislead the public? Many of my constituents are not citizens of the UK and would feel excluded by that title. Does the hon. Gentleman agree?

Charles Kennedy: Call it the people's pension.

Steve Webb: Perhaps my right hon. Friend has been spending too much time with the Prime Minister's former press secretary lately.
	The point that we want to establish is the distinction from a contributory national insurance-based system, which has been described as a system of exclusion. National insurance these days is about excluding women, carers and the lower-paid. We value caring. We value bringing up the next generation. We value looking after older people. We support people who, through no fault of their own, have to do grotty part-time jobs that none of us would ever want to do, and we say that they have had a hard enough time for long enough. The injustice cannot be allowed to roll on for decades. Let us sort it out now.

Vera Baird: I understand what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but all the women who do not have a full basic state pension and have to claim means-tested benefits would still have to do so until they were 75. Why should they wait that long, when others do not?

Steve Webb: Indeed. One of the points about pensions policy is that we need both a long-term destination and a route map. We need to know where we want to be and how we are going to get there. I contrast the Government's destination which, as the hon. and learned Lady well knows, is mass means-testing, with our destination, which is precisely as she describes—a citizenship pension, paid at the level of the means test to obviate the mass from requiring means-testing, and linked to earnings so that that standard of living is available across the board.
	We have, however, had to be realistic about how far we can rescue an entirely inadequate pension. The fact that the pension has fallen so far behind the means test means that were we to stand up and say, "Vote for me and I'll give everybody lots more money", we would rightly be ridiculed. We have had to make what my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) would call a tough choice, and rightly so, to begin with those most in need—those over 75. But the hon. and learned Lady is right: the argument applies equally to those under 75, and we want to extend the principle as quickly as we can.
	I move to the third plank of the Government's approach to financial support for women. We have seen the inadequacy of the basic state pension of barely £50 a week. The answer, apparently, is the second state pension, which provides barely £10 a week. The Government would say, "Yes, but it's just building up. Give it a few years", but it is a pension that takes a generation to be truly awful. By the time it is fully in, a typical woman—not an extreme case—on a full basic pension and a full second pension will find during her retirement that she falls below the poverty line and has to claim a means-tested top-up.
	Even if we give the second pension 40 years, it will be so poor that it will not keep people clear of means-testing in their retirement. If that is the answer, one wonders about the question.
	The basic pension is inadequate for women and the second pension is woefully inadequate for women, which brings us to the Government's real triumph, the pension credit. The Government amendment states that the pension credit is the answer. The pension credit gives more to women than to men, but that is because women are so poor. It also misses more women than men. The Minister did not say "yeah" to that, but "yeah" would have been appropriate.
	Older pensioners are the least likely to take up the pension credit, and they tend to be women, particularly widows. The pension credit is like a scattergun: it hits some—we do not doubt that those people are grateful—but misses many. How long can we rely on a system that gives way when pressure is exerted? How long can we rely on a system which is meant to plug the holes in the basic pension and second pension, but which misses more than 1 million of our fellow citizens, who are predominantly women?

Vera Baird: The hon. Gentleman took my point that his proposal would only give equality to women over 75. Since that is his proposal's consequence, he must try to come up with a solution to the problem that I raised before—how to allocate carers' credits for part-time caring; otherwise he will disregard all women aged between 60 and 75 who are carers and who do not receive credits towards their pensions. He must look for a solution to that problem, as well as offering a solution for the over-75s.

Steve Webb: The Government do not pay women who have reached that age group a penny. Many carers, who perhaps care for elderly relatives, are angry because, when they reach pension age, the Government say, "You can either have your meagre retirement pension or your carers' money, but not both." Many carers resent that treatment.
	We accept the principle that caring must be valued and want to make progress towards valuing it, but we cannot achieve everything at once. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Inverness, West said, what have the Government been doing? The fact that the figures that I quoted are after six years of a new Labour Government makes one realise the scale of the problem.
	We welcome the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to his post. He is widely regarded as an able politician—I mean that in the nicest possible way—and I look forward to forming a constructive working relationship with him. The cynics in my party said that if one wants to sack 30,000 people, why not put in a trade unionist? I would not say that. I welcome him to his post and look forward to finding the consensus on pensions that is everywhere except in the new Labour Government—hopefully, we can take one extra convert with us.
	The basic pension and second pension are inadequate, and the pension credit misses out far too many women. Where do we go from here? The Government strategy is gradualist, which may not be ideal for those who are 83. The Government say that the second pension will be worth a bit more in a decade or two, but it will be so inadequate that one will need to claim a means-tested top-up. They say that all will be well with pension credit after another phone line, advertising campaign or leaflet drop, but they fail to recognise the endemic problem—the people who need it most do not take it up.
	We do not need incremental change of the sort proposed by the Conservatives, which would deliver £7 for a man and £5 for a woman. I do not know whether the wider British public recognise that that is Conservative policy—the increases would occur over the course of a Parliament and are pro rata to what women draw. The 21st-century Conservative party should not be in favour of such a measure, but perhaps I am wrong.
	It is not good enough to introduce incremental change. We cannot say, "Those people have already retired. We will write them off, but we will do something for the next generation." Retired people have often given their best to this country, to bringing up their families, to caring and to fairly menial work that does not pay enough to pay national insurance.
	Liberal Democrat Members believe that radical reform rather than marginal incremental change is required.
	That is why I was proud last week to join my right hon. Friend the leader of the Liberal Democrats in proposing a dramatic change to the basis on which pensions are paid. We want a pension based on citizenship that says, "We value you for being a citizen of this country, not because you've done better-paid work." We want a pension that lifts people clear of the unnecessary processes of means-testing that leave many in poverty and keeps pace with the living standards of the majority. That is the radical approach that we are advocating.
	It was worth coming back to the House for a second week to talk about pensions, because none of those ideas was properly explored in last week's debate moved by the Conservatives, who are still thinking in the old way of a few pounds here and a few pounds there. The fact that they have not tabled a motion on women's pensions makes one realise how low a priority they attach to the issue.
	It is time that the injustices that older women have faced are tackled. This motion suggests how we should do it, and I commend it to the House.

Malcolm Wicks: I beg to move, To leave out from "House" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
	"welcomes the Pensions Green Paper as the first ever statement of government policy to explicitly consider the needs of women; further welcomes the commitment by the Government to report next year on the pensions position of women; supports steps to improve the incomes of women pensioners and enable more women than ever to build up pensions; welcomes in particular the introduction of Pension Credit, benefiting over two million women, and the state second pension, helping millions of the lowest paid women and women with caring responsibilities to build up a second pension; believes that both main Opposition parties' policies are unaffordable, unworkable and do nothing for the very poorest; notes that the Liberal Democrat policies will be financed by scrapping DTI programmes, which boost the wealth of the nation through investment in research and innovation; supports the conclusion of the Pensions Policy Institute that 'the average woman will lose' under proposed Conservative policy; notes that 99 per cent. of NHS trusts provide single-sex sleeping accommodation for planned admissions; and, as there are 10,000 wards in use across the NHS, congratulates the Government on this achievement; applauds the extension of breast screening to women aged 65 to 70, resulting in an additional 200,000 women being invited since April 2001; commends the Government's historic commitment to tackling pensioner poverty, which is continuing to do most for the poorest women pensioners; and welcomes the £10 billion extra that the Government is spending on pensioners this year compared with the 1997 system."
	I, too, start by welcoming our new Secretary of State, fresh from the TUC conference in Brighton. I very much look forward to working with him.
	As I like to be generous on these occasions, I acknowledge that the Liberal party has, historically, made a substantial contribution to British social politics. I mention once again the Old Age Pensions Act 1908, the introduction of the original national insurance scheme before the second world war, and of course the seminal report of 1942 by that great Liberal, Sir William Beveridge.
	Sadly, however, since the 1940s the Liberals have had a rather thin period. To be blunt, there has been nothing much to report in the past 60 years. We have seen the strange death of Liberal social reform; I hope that the more literate Liberals will understand a reference to a great and important book. That great gap in six decades of Liberal history has not been put right by today's announcements or by the speech by the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb), despite the help that my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) tried to give him. I always see that help coming and duck.
	Yet, as I say, I want to be kind. I welcome another opportunity to debate pensions having done so last week. We do not have a pensions debate for a few weeks and then two come along at once. This time I want to address the subject in a slightly different way by discussing two key themes that were mentioned by the hon. Member for Northavon: women and pensions; and the needs of the most hard-pressed elderly people.
	The Liberals are keen on addressing issues about women. They even have one or two women MPs to help them along, but when I look at their Benches I see more gender inequality in terms of political representation than I do when I look at my own.
	Women's pensions must be analysed in the context of changing social structures, gender roles, work patterns and caring patterns in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Since the 1940s, substantial changes to key trends have added up to a fierce hurricane that has battered the post-war welfare state and the assumptions that underlie it. As a keen student of social policy and of William Beveridge, the way in which things have changed is perhaps best illustrated by looking at some of the assumptions that underpinned Beveridge's great report of 1942, in which he said that
	"all women by marriage acquire a new economic and social status, with risks and rights different from those of the unmarried. On marriage a woman gains a legal right to maintenance by her husband as a first line of defence against risks which fall directly on the solitary woman; she undertakes at the same time to perform vital unpaid service".
	That was what William Beveridge wrote in 1942. Although, from a modern and feminist perspective, one could almost make fun of that rather sexist view of women, I suspect that it would have been prevalent in all our political parties at the time. I cite the quote so that I can talk about subsequent changes.
	Since then, changes in employment patterns and patterns of care, divorce and separation, the growing number of one-parent families and women's changing attitudes and ambitions have presented new challenges and raised fresh questions. What are the implications for women's pensions? First, I would argue that anyone who is concerned about women's pensions should start not with pensions but jobs and incomes. If women earn well during their working lives, they are more likely to have decent pensions in retirement. We are therefore working to reduce the pay gap.
	We gave a boost to low-paid workers' pay, 70 per cent. of whom are women, with the introduction of the national minimum wage, which is, therefore, a key part of pension strategy. Approximately 1 million women have benefited and it has contributed to a 2 per cent. drop in the pay gap since 1997. We are reducing the gap further by making it easier for women and men to take up equal pay claims by simplifying and speeding up existing tribunal procedures. For example, we introduced an equal pay questionnaire procedure in April 2003 and we are committed to a target of 45 per cent. of large companies undertaking pay reviews by April 2008.
	Other matters are important to women's earnings and careers. The part-time workers' regulations that the Government introduced will ensure that 6 million workers, the majority of whom are women, are not treated less favourably than comparable full-timers in their terms and conditions. In a sense, access to affordable and good quality child care is part of the pension strategy. We want to provide an extra 250,000 child care places by 2006, helping with the costs through the tax credit system.
	If we start with an analysis of employment and pay, we should go on to ensure that modern pension systems are not based purely on a traditional idea of an economy and a male-dominated perception of work. In recent decades, home responsibility payments have therefore credited young mothers with children into the national pension system. Despite the traditional cynicism of the hon. Member for Northavon about social progress, I make no apology for introducing the state second pension to boost the pensions of low and moderately paid employees. It provides, for the first time, additional pensions for carers and long-term disabled people. That will especially help women, many of whom work part-time or as carers. Almost all the 2.5 million carers who will benefit from the state second pension are women, as are approximately 70 per cent. of the 5 million low earners.
	Stakeholder pensions are another part of the story because they will help women in the modern labour market who often move between employers and occupations and may, at different times, be self-employed or employed on a limited contract or a permanent contract. Flexibility means that stakeholder pensions are a good option for women who take a break from work, for example, to raise a family, because they can stop and restart their contributions without penalty. Stakeholder pensions are open to non-earners and, therefore, enable women or others who do not work but can afford to save something towards retirement to do that. Stakeholder pension rules allow family or friends to contribute towards someone else's pension. That may help the large number of women who are carers. During their first year, a third of all stakeholder pensions were taken up by women. There are currently approximately 2 million stakeholder pensions.
	Other measures that are in place or proposed in the Pensions Bill will improve the position for women by making pensions cater more fairly for those with fragmented working lives. For example, our proposals on full transfer value for early leavers will allow people in short-stay jobs to take the full value of their pension with them when they leave such jobs. Often in the past, women who worked for relatively short periods essentially lost much of the build-up of their pension rights.
	Our informed choice programme, which offers help, such as workplace financial advice, will benefit those who have most often been excluded from pension provision in the past.
	I have spoken about today and the future but we are also presented with demands about pensions that are inherited from the past.
	So, just as we need to look forward many decades to plan for an uncertain future—the pension protection fund will be crucial in that regard—we also need to understand past decades if we are to tackle current problems. New policies will affect pensions that are drawn in 2050 and beyond, but our policies also affect those elderly people whose life chances and incomes were perhaps determined in the 1920s and 1930s.
	In 1997, the Labour Government understood that all too graphically. Some pensioners were struggling on as little as £69 a week, such was the debilitating impact of the Tory inheritance bequeathed to us. That is why we make no apology for seeking to focus some of the additional resources that we have put into pensions on the poorer and more pressed elderly person. Hence the pension credit, which provides a guarantee that no pensioner need live on less than £105 a week. That means that the poorer third of pensioner households are now £1,750 better off in real terms than they would have been, compared with the system that existed in 1997. That is an extra £33 a week.
	Opposition Members say that they object to the indignities of the means test. Perhaps they have forgotten the days when the Tory means test meant that prudent pensioners who had made modest provision for their retirement saw their benefits reduced pound for pound because of their savings. The days of 40-page-long claim forms, of having to visit unpleasant local offices in inconvenient locations, and of having to tell the DSS—as it then was—about every change in their finances have gone.
	The new Pension Service—we are the first Government to have such a specific service—means that people can claim their pension credit over the telephone, where one of our advisers will fill in the form on behalf of the elderly person or her carer, or people can go to advice surgeries in all our constituencies. Alternatively, they can arrange for a home visit. More than 500,000 home visits have now been carried out by the Pension Service.

Michael Weir: I hear what the Minister is saying about pension credit, but how does he explain why so many pensioners seem reluctant to claim it? Why does the Government's own target project that a considerable number of pensioners will fail to claim their pension credit up to 2006?

Malcolm Wicks: I am pleased with the progress that has been made. About 3.1 million individuals are now claiming pension credit, and the number of those on the guarantee element has increased considerably, compared with a few years ago. We are not complacent, however, and we want more and more people to claim pension credit. I am bound to say that I think there is a role for Members of Parliament in spreading the word about pension credit, rather than spreading cynicism, as sometimes happens. Whatever their views about income testing, I hope that Opposition Members will accept that the pension credit is a million miles away from the income testing of the past. That is a fact, and MPs who find out about pension credit and our local Pension Service know it. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman knows it, too. Perhaps he is going to acknowledge that fact now.

Michael Weir: The Minister is missing the point. Most of us will encourage our constituents to take up what they can get under this system, whether we agree with the means-testing or not. The point is that many pensioners are not applying for pension credit. Why are they not doing so, if to claim for it is as simple as the Minister suggests? Many will not do so, and we cannot persuade them to do so. What will the Government do about those pensioners?

Malcolm Wicks: Well, the scheme only started in October. More than 3 million individuals are claiming, and our survey shows that those who have been through the process would recommend that their friends and neighbours should apply. This is a popular policy, but it raises a traditional issue. With any extra resource that we can devote to pensions, should we give every pensioner the same increase? The Liberals offer a variation on that question, with their proposed boost for the over-75s, and I shall come to that directly. Should we give everyone the same increase? Should the person with the big investment income and an occupational pension adding up to £50,000 a year in retirement get the same number of pounds extra each week as the 83-year-old widow trying to live on £80 or £90?
	That is the issue—of course it would be simpler for us to give everyone the same increase, but simplicity is not a primary goal in social policy. Fairness is a primary goal, which is why we are investing in the pension credit.

Nigel Waterson: rose—

Malcolm Wicks: I was about to ask what the Liberal party says to that, but I am equally interested in what the Conservatives might think, so I shall seek an answer.

Nigel Waterson: My commiserations to the Minister on not being reshuffled to the Foreign Office or somewhere less dangerous and more palatable. Will he confirm, however, that the age-related payment that his Government are giving in relation to council tax increases will go to everybody—the duke and the dustman? Can he confirm that the great attraction of increasing the basic state retirement pension is that the take-up rate is more or less 100 per cent?

Malcolm Wicks: I was implying that the art of judgment, which I would commend to the hon. Gentleman, is to get the balance right between what we can do for all elderly people—which is why the winter fuel payment, for instance, goes to all elderly people in certain age groups, to which I shall refer later—and what extra we devote to the most hard-pressed. Although targeting raises issues and challenges in relation to take-up, and we are determined to meet those challenges, I nevertheless think that if we are concerned not just with simplicity but with fairness, targeting has a place.
	Let me move on to the Liberal Democrat proposals. Although we heard something about a citizen's pension, it seemed to be anyone at all's pension—I heard nothing about the concept of citizenship, rights and duties or of the idea of what one puts in, one takes out. It is fascinating that the Liberals, who could claim credit for inventing social insurance because of the great Beveridge and the initiatives of the early inter-war years, are now going to overthrow it totally.
	What the Liberals propose is not a citizen's pension but anyone at all's pension. The hard-working British citizen who has contributed by providing care and working hard for their country will get exactly the same as anyone at all who might have spent their time in prison, down the pub or doing whatever. It is anyone at all's pension, so please do not stain the decent concept of citizen with it. I will give way to a hard-working citizen.

Hywel Williams: I find it difficult to square the Minister's support for the contributory principle, which has been the basis of the social security system for such a long time, with the huge growth in means-testing under his Government. How does he square that circle?

Malcolm Wicks: As I was saying, we must strike that balance. One of the difficulties with the insurance concept in practice—not the principle—is the carers issue: people caring for young children have been credited rather late in the day by Government. When it comes to retirement age, the great majority of men retire on more or less a full basic state pension, but very large numbers of women do not. That has been the flaw in the practice of social insurance but not, in my judgment, in the principle of it.
	The Liberal Democrats, who have advocated an anyone at all's pension, have some sense of costings and economics, although they would abolish a whole Department—in fact, they would not actually abolish the trade and industry but many of the things that support it, which we shall discuss later. Because they have some sense of arithmetic—I know that the hon. Member for Northavon has his own calculator—first, they say that they will only pay the extra money to the over-75s. I think that I have that right. As is often the case, the hon. Member for Northavon starts with an interesting, important notion: the relatively poorer status of the very elderly or the over-75s. Sadly, with that important idea, and a bit of evidence base behind it, he gets over-excited, and, instead of the need to improve that status becoming a strand of policy, it determines, dominates and ultimately destroys the credibility of his whole pension plan.
	Let us look at the evidence. Yes, older pensioners have lower incomes on average—pensioners over 75 have only about 90 per cent. of the income of those under 75; but it is 90 per cent., not 60 per cent. or 70 per cent.
	A significant reason for the fact that older people have lower incomes is—among other things—their lower private pensions. Let me give the hon. Gentleman some evidence. Pensioner couples with a head of household under 75 receive an average of £139 a week from private occupational pensions; when the head of household is over 75, they receive an average of £108. So far I am with the hon. Gentleman, which is why I think this should be a strand of our social policy. But—and these are important qualifications—although older pensioners are on average poorer than younger pensioners, there is a wide variation in circumstances. In fact, over half—about 56 per cent.—of pensioners in relative poverty are under 75. [Interruption.] I am trying to have a serious debate with the hon. Member for Northavon. He must pull himself together, because these are important statistics.
	At the other end of the income spectrum, a quarter of all pensioner couples with a head of household over 75 have net income of over £308 a week. In other words, age—although an interesting factor—should not be a dominant guide for policy.
	On 27 February 2003, there was an interesting exchange between our former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, East (Mr. Smith), and the hon. Member for Northavon. My right hon. Friend said to the hon. Gentleman
	"In the interests of open debate on distributional issues, which the hon. Gentleman says he welcomes, does he accept that the cost of his strategy is not only that some older rich pensioners get money that they arguably do not need so much, but that younger poorer pensioners do not get money that they do need?"
	The hon. Gentleman replied
	"I accept that."—[Official Report, 27 February 2003; Vol. 400, c. 442.]
	So the hon. Gentleman has accepted the difficulties involved in his own position.
	I think that there are also serious issues relating to financial sustainability. The Liberals' proposals would cost an additional £16 billion over five years, which would double over 10 years. I thought that the Liberals were going through a period of financial stricture, yet here is a major financial commitment.
	As soon as an Opposition party starts saying that it is going to abolish things to pay for social programmes, I become wary. Later the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) will tell us that his party is going to abolish the whole new deal. Never mind the fact that that micro-labour market policy has contributed to a move back to full employment; never mind the fact that it is helping a lot of lone parents back into work; never mind the fact that in many places—most places—we have abolished long-term youth unemployment because of the new deal. The Conservatives are going to abolish it in order to pay for their rather wobbly pension proposals, which we took apart—I think fairly effectively—last week.
	For the Liberals, it is obviously a learning game. They scratch their heads: how can they pay for their policy? They ask parliamentary questions. I reply because I want to be helpful, and because I am committed to an evidence base. At the end of the day, however, they cannot make the policy work within social security. They are going to abolish trade and industry, or at least the Department of Trade and Industry. It is a wholly incredible policy.

Kevin Brennan: In taking apart the Liberal Democrat position, has not my hon. Friend shown that a means test—particularly a light-touch means test—is much fairer than a crude age test?

Malcolm Wicks: That is the issue. We are now spending £10 billion more on pensions each and every year than when we came to office. Much of that goes to all pensioners.
	We do recognise the importance of the age factor. I am trying to persuade the hon. Member for Northavon to be slightly calmer about that. An age factor is involved in winter fuel payments: there is more for the over-80s. The same applies to television licences, and to the extra £100 for households containing people aged 70 or over to help with the council tax burden. The hon. Gentleman, however, has become over-excited about the age factor: it dominates his whole pension policy. A fascinating statistic has coloured his judgment, and supposedly that of the financial managers of his party. That is the difficulty. We are not against an age factor, but we want to put it in context.

Steve Webb: rose—

Malcolm Wicks: The hon. Gentleman may have changed his mind, of course, now that he has heard the evidence.

Steve Webb: Will the Minister consider another facet of the age question, which is that pensioners over 75 do not have long to go? His softly-softly, slowly-slowly, "over a generation we will sort this out" policy is all very well, but those people need the cash now. Is there not an urgency to this matter for older pensioners?

Malcolm Wicks: First, I do not accept—[Hon. Members: "Say yes".] I am not going to say yes, because it would be a silly answer. I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's gloomy prognosis. Many people who reach the age of 75 often have a reasonable life expectancy—[Interruption.] Look at the figures; it can be demonstrated. What the hon. Gentleman says is an argument for some selectivity and targeting to try to help the poorest groups. Getting over-excited—I use the term again—about the age issue means that the hon. Gentleman is over-egging or over-ageing the pudding. The distribution of much of the extra money he proposes will not be focused. I have already made it clear that we accept the value of help for TV licences, winter fuel payments and so forth, but, to be fair, we have to achieve the right balance between making general provision for older people and targeting. Almost half of the extra £10 billion that we are spending is going to the poorest one third—mostly women, which is important to note in the context of the debate.

Vera Baird: Is there not another problem about linking things so wholeheartedly to age—the considerable gap in life expectancy between the richest and the poorest? In my Redcar constituency, men's life expectancy is about 10 years fewer than for men who live in the south-east, so giving extra money solely on the grounds that people are getting older has the problem that some people will not live long enough to get any enjoyment from it.

Malcolm Wicks: There are equivalents to the north-south divide in all regions. For example, there are some very affluent and healthy people over the age of 80 while other people, because they have had a long and difficult working life in difficult industries, may be quite frail in their early 60s.
	To conclude, I welcome the debate and I have acknowledged the historic role of the Liberals, while expressing some disappointment about the last 60 years. I have suggested that the Liberals have not got the balance right, whereas the Labour Government have, particularly in respect of fairness and social justice. We do not pretend that we have all the answers and all the strategies on women's issues, which is why, when my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) suggested a report on pensions, I was willing to accept the proposal. That report will be published some time next year and I hope that it will provide a focal point for further debate. However, I am not saying today simply that we are going to have a report. I am reporting the action and endeavour that we have taken to help women pensioners and, indeed, all poorer pensioners in Great Britain.

Nigel Waterson: I greatly welcome the opportunity to debate these issues today and I am delighted to welcome the new Secretary of State to his post—I see his receding form departing from the Chamber. He is on a steep learning curve. When he was appointed, I could not help remembering—the story may be apocryphal, but I doubt it—that when the right hon. Member for Hamilton, North and Bellshill (Dr. Reid) was appointed Secretary of State for Health, he is reputed to have walked into the Prime Minister's study at No. 10 and, having looked at the Prime Minister's face, muttered to himself "Oh,"—expletive—"it's health"! I cannot imagine that a similar expletive would not have escaped the lips of the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. Despite that, we wish him well.
	I congratulate the Liberals on finally producing a pensions policy, as well as on securing today's debate. Their policy is peppered with contradictions and full of flaws, but better late than never. I shall return to that point in more detail later.
	It gives me great pleasure to see the Minister for Pensions in his place. As I said earlier, he must have hoped against hope that he might be released from this living and waking nightmare of the job that he does. Sadly, he will remain chained to his oar until the ship finally sinks beneath the surface.
	However, we are pleased that he is still here, and his engaging stories about Beveridge are always great fun.
	The Minister has taken the credit for producing this report on women's pensions. That is becoming a habit. I seem to recall that the hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) tabled in Standing Committee an amendment that was supported by both the official Opposition and the Liberal Democrats. The Minister was not at all keen to make that commitment until he realised that he might be forced to do so by a vote in Committee. We are pleased that he made it in the end, and I am sure that the hon. and learned Lady is pleased too, but he should not give the impression that the report was his idea.

Vera Baird: No one is pretending to be the parent of the idea, which emerged from the Fawcett Society campaign. I want to make it clear that there was no reluctance of any kind on my hon. Friend the Minister's part. Even before we debated the matter in Committee, he met me outside and offered to make this report. Furthermore, I emphasise that he improved on what I was asking for. The amendment to the Bill that I wanted need not have come into force for two or three years, and my hon. Friend the Minister offered me instead a report to be published next year. That was an improvement on what I wanted.

Nigel Waterson: I am delighted that the hon. and learned Lady is so pleased with that concession. The Minister is usually a stickler for accuracy, and I am merely saying to him that he should not rewrite history.
	I shall now deal with how the Liberal Democrats' recently announced pensions policy might impact on women. The Liberal Democrats want to extend the citizens pension to all pensioners, and suggest that that could be financed through the use of contracted-out rebates or by raising the state pension age. I do not remember that that was their headline when they launched the policy. Perhaps the hon. Member for Romsey (Sandra Gidley), when she winds up the debate, will expand on that. Is it Liberal Democrat policy to make people work longer than they have to at present?
	As the Minister mentioned, both last week and this, it is astonishing that the Liberal Democrat policy paper contains no detailed costings, nor a real explanation of how the policy would be financed. We are told that scrapping the Department of Trade and Industry could save £7.5 billion over the lifetime of a Parliament. Another suggestion—that the Office for National Statistics should charge more realistically for its services—sounds like they are grasping at straws. Government Departments are among the ONS's major users on a daily basis, so that may be an entirely circular argument.
	We should not be too bothered about all that, I suppose, as one great benefit of being a Liberal Democrat is that no one—including the media—ever looks into the details of the party's policy, for the obvious reason that it is all a bit academic. However, I shall soldier on and look at the so-called "residence test". This is interesting, as the Liberal Democrats say that, in government, they would devise residence rules in detail, based on Government data.
	Leaving aside the Liberal Democrat party's self-delusion that it may one day be in government, let me point out that being a responsible Opposition party means that one works such things out before getting into government. The reason is that the figures and facts may not add up when one finally gets there. The Liberal Democrats talk about a person who has spent a "significant" amount of his or her life resident in the UK. If they hope to be taken even remotely seriously by anyone—including women pensioners and would-be women pensioners—they need to try and flesh the policy out a bit.
	As has been noted already, the Liberal Democrats' policy means that they are saying to people who have paid their contributions every week, month and year of their working lives that none of that matters any more. Under that policy, a person who has made no contributions at all will end up getting the same amount in pension as everyone else.
	The Lib Dems' policy paper does not make it clear whether only the new so-called "citizen's pension" will be subject to a residence test or whether the test will also apply to the basic state pension received by people under 75. A clarification would be welcome when the hon. Member for Romsey winds up.
	The Liberal Democrats do not make it clear how the state pension for people aged under 75 will be increased over time. One has to assume, therefore, that they would increase that pension in line with prices. On the figures that I have looked at, that means that 59 per cent. of pensioners would not gain from the proposals. The Liberal Democrats also say that pensioners aged under 75 would keep their current pension entitlements along with any means-tested benefits they currently claim. They do not say, of course, at what rate they would increase the pension credit. Again, we have to assume that it would rise with prices rather than earnings. So, unlike the Conservative policy, the Liberal Democrat approach would do nothing to float pensioners under the age of 75 off means-tested benefits, which would affect very many women.
	The Liberal Democrats say that the state second pension should be phased out, but they do not explicitly say that people aged 75 or over would not receive payments over and above the citizen's pension in respect of the money they have paid into SERPS. It seems likely that pensioners aged 75 or over would get no more income as of right if they had paid into SERPS throughout their working lives than if they had merely lived in the UK for 20 years. I may be wrong about that, but I would be grateful for some clarification.
	The Liberal Democrats also talk about the Government's financial assistance scheme, which we debated at some length last week. They say that the figures are inadequate, and we agree. However, they suggest that the taxpayer should pick up the bill for the balance, which they estimate at £2.3 billion, minus the £400 million already committed by the Government in their package. Is that a new spending commitment? Is it included in the calculations that I have already set out?
	Perhaps the most worrying aspect of the Liberal Democrats' proposals—it has not received much prominence, probably because they did not give it much prominence when they unveiled their policy—is the scrapping of tax relief on pension contributions for higher rate taxpayers, which would amount to a £6 billion raid on people's dwindling pension pots. We all know that one of the ways under the present system that women are able to establish a decent pension in retirement is by getting into an occupational pension scheme. One of the ladies given as an example in the excellent report produced by Age Concern and the Fawcett Society is a constituent of mine. She faced the unfairness of the present system because she had her children and brought them up, but she then requalified and built up a pension in her new occupation. That is how many women try to catch up in the pension stakes. However, many women would be deterred by the Liberal Democrats' new proposal. It will affect not only the super rich; millions of hard-working people who do the right thing by saving for their retirement, despite all the deterrents introduced by the Government, would be hit by a double whammy. They would be taxed on their pension contributions when they get their salary and again when they receive their pension income.

Steve Webb: I need to nail one or two myths before they get going. The hon. Gentleman appears to have read our policy document. Did he read the sentence in paragraph 6.2 that states:
	"The central part of the Lib Dem approach is to promote simplicity, and with the other changes we are currently proposing we believe that it would create more confusion than simplicity to change the tax reliefs as well."?
	There is no proposal to change the tax reliefs: that is a complete fiction.

Nigel Waterson: That is not my understanding, and I hope that the hon. Member for Romsey will deal with that point in a little more detail when she winds up. The Liberal Democrats do not appear to take seriously the option of occupational pensions as a way for women to catch up—although I accept that it is only one way and is available only to certain women.
	On the whole issue of women's pensions, there is no denying that under successive Governments, and due to the sociological shifts of which the hon. Gentleman spoke, considerable unfairness has grown up that affects many women. I have already referred to the report produced by Age Concern and the Fawcett Society; indeed, I attended its launch. However, the Minister, the noble Lady Hollis, who was also present, made it apparent that the Government were not likely to accept the report's recommendations.
	It is no good for the Minister for Pensions to clutch at straws by talking about the pension credit. Even after tens of thousands of pounds have been spent on advertising it, almost 2 million people are still not claiming it. As we know, the Government's working assumption is that 1.4 million people will never get around to claiming it and many of them will be women.
	The Conservative party is looking at women's pensions, too, and at how to address the problems—possibly by amendments to the contribution rules or through a carer's credit, to reflect the role of carers who bring up families and look after disabled relations and so on. Recently, we unveiled for consultation our proposals for a lifetime savings account, which we think will be extremely attractive in encouraging young women and men to save for their retirement.
	Let me deal briefly with mixed-sex wards. It is absolutely disgraceful that they still exist in this day and age. When a Conservative Government are in power, we expect them to become a thing of a past—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) obviously agrees.
	There is also a worry about the level of screening for breast cancer among older women in some parts of the country.
	Last week, the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) said that
	"when Labour came to office we had one of the strongest pension provisions in Europe and now probably we have some of the weakest".
	That is a damning indictment of the Government's record; it affects women, and men, too. However, the Prime Minister has recently taken an interest in pensions. Yesterday, at the TUC conference, he said:
	"There is no easy solution. The blunt truth is that the population is ageing; people live longer."
	My goodness, that man has his finger on the pulse. He talked about finding solutions to the problems.
	More interesting than the Prime Minister's words has been the briefing, over the past few days, about possible solutions. There is the plan for taxpayers to pay an extra 1.5p in the pound for national insurance, which is a typical Government strategy. They would keep all the wasteful, unsuccessful schemes—such as most of the new deal—but charge people even more to get a decent pension when they retire. Interestingly, No. 10 seems to have woken up to the wisdom of scrapping means-testing and finding a different way out. It seems to be joining the consensus about which we spoke last week: means-testing must be addressed and rolled back.
	The only person who is not part of the consensus is the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Perhaps he will simply tell the Prime Minister to mind his own business. We do not know. The worry, which is a real problem for the new Secretary of State—who has obviously gone away to continue his study of pensions—is that pensions are being drawn into the eternal battle between the Prime Minister and the Chancellor. If it is true that the Prime Minister has finally realised—albeit, no doubt, for electoral reasons—the idiocy of proceeding down the route of mass means-testing and has concluded that many of our party's policies are correct, I commend that. There should, if possible, be a broad element of cross-party unity on pensions, but I think that the Chancellor will not let the Prime Minister come to that conclusion.
	We have a great deal of sympathy with most of the motion. We agree with what it says about mixed-sex wards, real choices for older people, a decent state pension, breast cancer screening and direct payments at post offices. With the single exception of the proposal for a citizens' pension, which is unworkable and impractical and will not deliver what is promised for it, we would support the motion, and I invite my right hon. and hon. Friends to do so in the Lobby this evening.

Frank Field: I am pleased to have been called in today's debate, and I should like to make two brief contributions: I wish to welcome the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions—indeed, I want to go further than that—and I wish to suggest to those on the Treasury Bench that, although it is necessary to have the normal party fights over new ideas during such debates, the Government go away after the votes tonight and seriously consider the Liberal Democrat proposals to find out whether we should lift them and include them as part of our proposals for the general election.
	First, like practically every hon. Member, I welcome the appointment of the new Secretary of State without any reservation whatsoever. From my personal experience, I know that he is someone of moral courage, which will not come amiss in the issues that he must face in putting in place Labour's strategy on pensions for the election. He is also someone with very considerable political abilities. Indeed, I doubt whether he shares the Prime Minister's view that, with his appointment, we can now see the light at the end of the pensions tunnel. My guess is that someone of my right hon. Friend's experience realised that it was not the light at the end of the tunnel but an oncoming train, largely manned by pensioners, and irate pensioners at that.
	My right hon. Friend knows, even if other members of the Government do not yet fully appreciate it, that the next general election will be the first election when a majority of voters who turn out will be pensioners. When we add to that total those who are within 15 years' striking distance of that age, the likelihood is that 80 per cent. of voters next time will be either coming up to retirement or will be retired. I make a plea to him that he use the extraordinary good will and leeway that he has, and his ability to think differently from previous incumbents, to ensure that we have the strongest possible pension policy when we face that elderly electorate at the polls, probably next year. In doing that, I want to make a plea for looking seriously at the Liberal Democrat proposal.
	My very honourable Friend the Minister for Pensions has already moved some way, but he has seen what an old claptrap idea it is to link the proposal to citizens pensions and all that. It is almost as though he was stripping down the idea and getting it ready for Labour to put its imprint on it. I want to return to his argument: in an age when social bonds are dissolving all too fast, what a folly it is to make another attack on the national insurance scheme, which is one of the clear bonds that most of our citizens know and appreciate.
	In advocating that we look seriously at the Liberal Democrat idea, I want to refer those on the Treasury Bench to the Warwick agreement. We have got rid of clause IV. We have got rid of most of the ideas, the maps and compass that used to guide me when I was a younger member of the Labour movement. Now we have the Warwick agreement. In that agreement, which has been signed by the Government and the trade unions, there is a whole section on pensions. Prominent among those commitments is the phrase,
	"Steps to make Pension Credit payment automatic and move beyond means testing".
	That is now one of the cornerstones of the Warwick agreement.
	My hon. Friend has a St. Sebastian complex—so much so that he now cannot even see an arrow without getting his body in the way. Of course, none of this is intended to be a criticism of his contribution, which, as always, I found exciting and comprehensive.
	However, there was just a tiny gap in his contribution. There was not one word about how we might fulfil the Warwick agreement and about how we, as a party, are going to move away from a policy of mass means-testing to one in which there is automatic entitlement.
	Before my hon. Friend came into the House and when he was in the House and making contributions from the Back Benches, there was no stronger advocate of universal provision and no one stronger in pointing out the folly of the Conservative Government thinking only of selectivity in terms of income. He said that they should consider selectivity in terms of age. However, because of his St. Sebastian complex, I will not detain the House by reading out any of those quotations. I merely point out that he has always made the case for a selective approach that tries to consider how one can designate other than by income the groups that are overwhelmingly poor. Age is one factor that one can use.

Malcolm Wicks: rose—

Frank Field: I shall happily give way to St. Sebastian.

Malcolm Wicks: I have not seen an effective arrow coming my way. However, does my right hon. Friend recognise that our argument is that we need to get the balance right between universal provision using the national insurance system, and a more selective approach? When I cited some of the evidence to show that although an older age criterion has some sense, it is nevertheless imperfect because many poor people are under, and some richer people are over, the age of 75. Did he hear the evidence? Has he yet been able to assess it, and is there just a chance that it might affect his thinking?

Frank Field: It did not do that. I am sad to hear that St. Sebastian now needs an eye test. If he did not see any arrows aimed in the opposite direction, goodness knows what occurred.
	The importance of the Prime Minister's position is that, of course, any social security system will have means tests in it. The question is whether we are increasing the scope of means tests or lessening it. The truth is that, up to the reshuffle, it looked as though we had a strategy of increasing the numbers on means-testing. It now looks as though we have an option of opposing that. One of the better ways of doing that is to use age, rather than income, as the basis.
	The hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) did not suggest that this one move alone would solve all our pension difficulties. It does and could play a part in a short-term strategy of reversing the tide to run against means-testing. There is, of course, a need for the Government and perhaps the Opposition parties to have an idea of what their major and longer-term reforms will be. When the Adair Turner Pensions Commission report is published, there may not be a hiding place for a political party that does not have longer-term or fundamental proposals to put before the electorate next May, if that is the correct date.
	After all the good old razzamatazz of the debate, I make a plea to my hon. Friend that we consider seriously such ideas. I welcome his cutting through the typical Liberal Democratic claptrap of looking for a trendy phrase and almost sinking a good idea because of it. Somehow it does not matter how hard or long one has worked. That record will be ignored.
	If we lived in a 1950s-type society in which social bonds were strengthening rather than weakening, if we did not have major problems of family and social breakdown in our constituencies, and if more and more younger people felt that they had a sense of belonging not only to their own towns but to their country, there might be a case for saying that we can be cavalier with the idea of what national insurance has meant to people in the past. However, in the circumstances of vast social disintegration, it would be folly to do that.

Steve Webb: The right hon. Gentleman thinks deeply about these matters, so one must think deeply about what he is saying. Does he acknowledge the flipside, which is that the national insurance system has failed to value many things that he values, such as caring and low-paid work? We are not saying that people who have contributed nothing to society should have something, but that people who have contributed to society, yet receive nothing, should get something. Surely that would contribute to social cohesion.

Frank Field: Of course it would, so we would keep the baby and the bathwater rather than throwing both out. I thought that my hon. Friend the Minister was saying to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) during their interesting interchange that when the report is published next year one suggestion that follows on might be to make good some of the glaring gaps in the national insurance system by ensuring that credit is given for jobs such as caring for vulnerable old people, to be taken into account when computing people's pension entitlement.
	We must be able to pay for any proposals that we make in the election campaign. I agree that the Liberal Democrats have come up with a slightly hazy scheme of abolishing the Department of Trade and Industry, especially given that they want all its functions to be carried out elsewhere.
	I leave this point with my hon. Friend the Minister, because I suspect that he knows the figures and he used to write about such matters when he was a free agent. This year is the first in which higher-rate taxpayers will take half the tax subsidy that goes towards pension savings. It is not the case, as the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) suggested, that if we allowed such subsidy at only the standard rate—meaning that everyone was treated equally—we would rip £6 billion from the system. We would, however, find an extra £2 billion with which we could make payments to schemes such as those advocated by the Liberal Democrats. Given that our present tax subsidies support those with the most generous pension provisions to the greatest extent, we should have a little courage when fighting the next election and decide to redistribute some, but not all, of that money to the poorest people. That would go a long way towards ensuring that we could significantly increase payments to the over-75s through the national insurance system. Such a payment would have nothing to do with whether those people were citizens, but it would have a lot to do with whether they would vote for us.

Angela Watkinson: I am sorry that this debate is necessary, because I hate to hear women being talked about as though they are a race apart or a bunch of lame ducks—we are half the population, after all. I look forward to the day when such debates are no longer required.
	Today's debate has focused mainly on pensions, and I shall not go into the technicalities of pensions and benefits in the august company of many experts, but I know that a large percentage of older women left school young without qualifications and that many never worked outside the home at all. There are also those who had a mixed record of wartime outwork—if anyone can remember what that was—during which they collected bulk items of sewing to do at home or did light assembly work. They also split mica, and although I am not sure what mica was or what it was used for, women used to split it and it was jolly unpleasant. Women also cared for their families—both the older and younger generations—and worked in their homes without the benefit of modern appliances. They juggled that with spasmodic periods of low-paid employment outside the home, all of which meant that they had no personal pension to show for an arduous existence. Some older women had rewarding employment, paid national insurance contributions and earned a pension in their own right.
	The Liberal Democrats' policy is unfair in that respect—the effort of those individuals should not be disregarded.
	I recall the 1960s, when married women were given the option of giving up paying the full national insurance contribution and paying a reduced married woman's contribution. There were obvious risks in that, not least the failure of the marriage, or if the wife was much younger than the husband, there was a considerable wait until he was 65 before she could draw a pension on the strength of his contributions. My personal recollection is that the provision of information was very good, and I was in no doubt whatever about what was being offered and what the likely pitfalls were, but I accept that many women claim that they did not understand at the time the disadvantage that they were storing up for themselves in the future.
	May I commend to the House the Conservative party policy, which will link the pension to earnings? The Conservatives will increase the single person's pension by £7 a week and a couple's pension by £11, on top of increases for price inflation, over four years. The pension credit will not be abolished, but of course as the state pension increases in line with earnings, fewer pensioners will be eligible.

Vera Baird: I am slightly puzzled by what the hon. Lady says, because if the basic state pension is to be index-linked, there will be no increase in the number of people coming off pension credit, as that too is linked to earnings. The two things will increase in parallel. The Conservatives will help off the minimum income guarantee element of the pension credit only those people who currently are about £6.99 below the MIG level—no one else will ever move off it. That is unless, of course, the basic state pension will go up with earnings but the Tories will freeze, and link to prices, the minimum income guarantee. That is the only way that it can be done. Is that what is going on?

Angela Watkinson: I was going to thank the hon. and learned Lady for her intervention, but I am now reluctant to do so. Her assumption about the parallel lines is misguided. The differential will change, and the value of the pension will rise so that more pensioners will be lifted out of means-testing.

Nigel Waterson: I am listening very carefully to what my hon. Friend is saying. As she knows, no one would lose under our proposals, but is she aware that despite several opportunities to speak up in the Chamber the Government are still being very coy about whether it would be their intention, if by some mischance they were elected to a third term, to increase the pension credit in line with prices or earnings? Is it not a bit rich for them to criticise us when they, the current Government, have not even formed a view about it?

Angela Watkinson: I thank my hon. Friend for that clarification.
	There is another in-built advantage to our proposals in that, as pensioners no longer rely on the means test, their savings will be freed from Government scrutiny, and a pound saved for retirement will mean a pound more for income in retirement.

David Taylor: I believe that one of the hon. Lady's political heroines is Lady Thatcher. Is she aware that it is now almost 25 years since that meanest of Acts resulted in the decoupling of pensions from pay? Does she accept that that has contributed more towards the poverty of present-day pensioners, particularly elderly females, than any other single Government move in recent times?

Angela Watkinson: One of the main reasons for women's inadequate pensions and their poverty in old age is the fact that they have been unable to work outside the home or they have not had the same opportunities as men to do so. We will put that right by linking pensions to earnings.
	The policy has received support from such august sources as the Institute for Public Policy Research, an editorial in The Observer, no less, the Equal Opportunities Commission and that robust and quite scary body, the London Pensioners Forum. If anyone has ever done battle with the latter, they will know that it is a force to be reckoned with. An Age Concern survey found that
	"nine out of ten pensioners receiving Pension Credit want the Government to provide a higher Basic State Pension . . . 73 per cent. believe that means testing puts people off applying for the benefit".
	On a related subject, elderly women in particular like to receive their pension using their pension book at their local post office. Upminster, which is part of the London borough of Havering, is subject to the Post Office's urban reinvention programme—a weasel-worded way of saying, "We are going to close your post offices." Many elderly women who have never worked outside the home regard the collection of their pension as a social occasion, because they meet people and know the sub-postmaster. All their life, they have budgeted in cash on a weekly basis, and that is how they wish to continue. The changes have therefore been very upsetting for them. If their post office has closed, they have to rely on a neighbour to collect their pension, or if they still have a post office, they have been pressed to have their pension paid into a bank account, which many of them do not want. They are supposed to have the option of opening a Post Office card account, but they have to be very persistent to do so, because the system is extremely off-putting. Small details such as remembering a PIN number are a distressing change of habit for them, and are a break in the way in which they have managed their finances all their life.

Chris Pond: The hon. Lady will be aware that more than 3 million people have already opened a Post Office card account. We have the means to ensure that whatever account people choose they can access those funds at the post office. She is right, however, that we need the post office network, so does she accept that the Liberal Democrat proposal to wipe out the £2 billion that we are putting into that network by scrapping the Department of Trade and Industry will not help those women pensioners?

Angela Watkinson: In one post office in my constituency, the good ladies genuinely believed that they would be listened to if they responded to the consultation and that it would make a difference if they signed the petition. Their post office, however, has been closed, and the alternative is two bus rides away, so the closure programme has resulted in some worrying injustices.

Vera Baird: I am interested in what the hon. Lady is saying, but what have the Conservatives ever done for women pensioners in the past? Home responsibilities protection was a Labour measure, and everything introduced since 1997 to help women out of poverty has been a Labour measure. What have the Conservatives ever done for women pensioners?

Angela Watkinson: The Conservatives have done a great deal for women, because the country became wealthy under a Conservative Government, and that prosperity was available to everyone, including pensioners, who are part of the community.
	I want to refer to mixed-sex wards, which are an utter disgrace. I accept that there are moves to do away with them, but they still exist. It is upsetting enough to go into hospital, but older women find it humiliating and embarrassing to be in a mixed-sex ward. When my mother-in-law was in a geriatric ward in Whipps Cross hospital, she shared a room with many elderly gentlemen with prostate difficulties who had to get out of bed every few minutes. They had to walk up and down the ward using certain appliances in front of ladies, which was a wholly unsuitable arrangement. The patients do not like such arrangements, which are as bad for men as for women, and neither do the staff. I look forward to the day when a policy of no more mixed-sex wards is implemented.
	A new hospital in Oldchurch in Romford, covering the London borough of Havering, is due to be opened next year. I asked for a reassurance that there would be no mixed-sex wards in that hospital, but I did not get an unequivocal response. I was told that there would be separate bays for male and female patients, with partitions, and that there would be separate facilities for them, but that is not quite the same as completely segregated wards, which is what patients want for privacy and dignity. I believe that that would be supported by staff.
	Finally, breast cancer screening has focused on women up to the age of 70. I welcome the extension of screening to women between 65 and 70, but there is no mention of women over 70 in the programme. They are encouraged to make their own appointment. However, many older women are of the old school, where one did not make a fuss. If asked whether they were all right, they would always say they were, even if they were not. My own mother was a case in point. We need to include women over 70 in the programme or introduce some method whereby they are reminded that they need to continue having regular screening, as that age group is most vulnerable to breast cancer.
	I look forward to the day when we no longer need policies for women—when we just need policies.

Vera Baird: I was slightly disappointed by the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb), who offered many fine words but no proposals to help women now aged 60 until they are 75, with the legion problems of pension eligibility that have been discussed today, and which were discussed last week and in all the proceedings on the Pensions Bill.
	Among recently retired men, 90 per cent. have a full basic state pension. Only 25 per cent. of recently retired women have a full basic state pension. The hon. Member for Northavon has nothing to say about them except that they will come to a second retiring age, so to speak, when they are 75. At that point they will start to get as of right, on some curious and not fully explained basis, an increment that will bring them up to the level of the minimum income guarantee, which many of them will have been getting before that on a means-tested basis. I am disappointed that even though the hon. Gentleman says that he is proposing a new idea, he does not deal with the problems that concern pensioners now and will concern those who are due to retire in the next 15 or more years.
	The hon. Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson) seemed to think that the Conservatives' policy was marvellous. As I understand it, the Tories would restore the link to earnings, which they destroyed 25 years ago. They more or less—this is not unfair—froze the level of the basic state pension for a very long time indeed, leading to the vast numbers of pensioners who were in poverty when we took office and requiring us to bring in the minimum income guarantee.
	Now, by way of redress 25 years later, the Tories would link the pension to earnings so that over the four years of a Parliament, a person with a full basic state pension would have it increased by £7. That is all that would be given. However, as I mentioned, 75 per cent. of women do not have a basic state pension, so what would they get out of this great gift from the Tories? At best, £5 on average, on £50 over four years. How will that help? It is proposed as some kind of answer to means-tested benefits that will start the crusade towards a good basic state pension and a reduction in the means-testing of benefits, but of course it will not achieve that.
	The proposal means that men who are £7 below the level of the pension credit will get to the level of the pension credit.
	People with an income £6 below the pension credit of £105 will be out of means-testing by £1 after four years. The band of people who are up to £6.99 below the minimum income guarantee may have the satisfaction of being brought off means-tested benefit by a penny or two, but that is a relatively small number of people, and guess what—the Conservative party favours the better-off. Only those who are close to the minimum income guarantee will get any benefit at all, but the benefit is trivial.

Angela Watkinson: Does the hon. and learned Lady oppose the restoration of the link to earnings for pensions?

Vera Baird: I oppose the absurd notion that current Tory policy bears any relation to the problems in the pension system. It is utter falsity to suggest that it has anything to do with significantly rolling back means-tested benefit. The figures produced by the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) suggest that approximately one quarter of pensioners will be brought off means-tested benefit. I doubt whether that is right, but if it is, in many cases pensioners will be brought off means-tested benefit by a matter of pennies.
	Those who are not on means-tested benefit will get £7 on top at the end of four years and be £7 richer, but they were richer in the first place, because they were not on means-tested benefit. On the shadow Secretary of State's own figures, three quarters of the people who are currently on means-tested benefit will still be on it at the end of four years. The policy will not roll back means-testing in any way.

Angela Watkinson: Does the hon. and learned Lady accept that pensioner bodies have demanded the restoration of the earnings link for some considerable time?

Steve Webb: Twenty-five years.

Vera Baird: Yes, pensioners demanded the restoration of the link 25 years ago, when the Tories scrapped it. Happily, the current climate among pension pressure groups is to re-examine that demand, not to set it aside, and to consider eligibility, which the Conservative party completely ignores. How is the Conservative policy a boon to women pensioners, whose problems were admirably set out by the hon. Member for Northavon? Save for £5, if they happen to be within £5 of the minimum income guarantee, how will it help them? The policy is a fake.
	The other flaw in the argument is that it is alleged that the first four years, which will provide £7 extra and bring those who are just below the minimum income guarantee above it, are just the start of the policy. Conservative Members claim that in years to come the basic state pension will keep increasing because it is index linked to wages and, as the hon. Member for Upminster puts it, more and more people will come off means-tested benefit.
	The minimum income guarantee element of the pension credit is also linked to earnings, so it runs side by side with the basic state pension. People will come off means-tested benefit only if the minimum income guarantee is frozen, which means that the income of the other three quarters of pensioners, whom the shadow Secretary of State is content to leave on means-tested benefit throughout, will gradually decrease, and they are, by definition, the poorest pensioners. The Tory policy really amounts to giving more money, and not very much of it at that, to the rich.
	How will giving a little bit more money to the relatively rich be paid for? The new deal, which has put 1 million people back in work, including enormous numbers of people in constituencies such as mine, would have to be scrapped. If the Conservatives have any interest in the regions, scrapping the new deal is another risible policy, and it is class-based.

David Taylor: My hon. and learned Friend is lucidly describing the effect of the Conservative policy on pensioners on the minimum income guarantee, which would be the reintroduction of the decoupling of pensions from inflation and wages in the economy of a sort that we last saw 25 years ago. The Conservative policy has an awful echo.

Vera Baird: Yes, my hon. Friend makes a strong point. In terms of public confidence in who will look after the pension system, the bottom line is how much money will be put into it as a whole. The Conservatives often say that there is a need to cut public spending, and I do not think that the public are fooled for one minute by their vote-chasing attempt to deceive them into thinking that if they vote Tory, means-testing will be over and their pride will be restored to them. They know very well that the Tories scrapped the earnings link, that they will keep the poor poor, and that in the end, however they try to tweak their policies, they will never put enough money into the pension system for people to have the proper basis for a contented retirement.
	Women have needs that the hon. Member for Upminster has not even considered. They have huge difficulties in getting a full basic state pension. The hon. Member for Northavon mentioned some of those difficulties; let me run through a couple more. Home responsibilities protection is a Labour measure; whatever the hon. Member for Upminster says, I am afraid the Tories did nothing for women caring for children or for older people. HRP gives a credit of a year at a time. A woman who will have to work for 39 years to get her pension entitlement and takes a year off to look after a child will then have to work for only 38 years, and on it goes to a maximum of 19 years. That is an unwieldy way of giving a credit, and for many women it does not work very well. Because it has to be based on a complete year, the woman will lose the first year if she does not have her baby on 6 April; and she will lose the last year as well if he does not eventually go to university on 5 April.
	There are more serious problems than that, however. For example, many women go back to work part time when their children start to go to nursery or to school, thereby losing their home responsibilities protection. If they fall into the category of working below the lower earnings limit, they neither pay a national insurance contribution nor are they credited with one, even though they are working. A woman who works 30 hours a week looking after children and 16 hours a week on the minimum wage will not get pension credit from either source, however long she carries on working long hours every day.
	Then there is the problem of the carers credit. A person gets a carers credit only if they are caring for somebody who is entitled to disability living allowance, which means that they require 35 hours of care. Many people do not require that much time. Many women take a part-time job rather than a full-time job in order to give 10 hours or 18 hours to an elderly relative, or to give 10 hours to each of two elderly relatives, or to share the care of an elderly relative with a sister. They will not get the carers credit, because they are caring for someone who needs only 18 hours or 20 hours' care, or they are sharing it with someone else, and the part-time job is not sufficient to bring them the credit either. They fall between two stools.
	Another problem is the left-over iniquity of the 25 per cent. rule, which says that even those who have worked sufficiently to qualify for 24.5 per cent. of a basic state pension are, for some bizarre reason that must be left over from the days of book keeping by quill pen, not entitled to a penny piece of it. They have to have 25 per cent. entitlement or they get nothing. That equates to an enormous amount of money. Twenty-five per cent. of £70—the basic state pension—is around £17.50. Over a decade, that robs £8,750 from a person who has worked and paid their national insurance.
	Only 25 per cent. of women have a full basic state pension on retirement—enormous numbers of them fall below that level because of all the difficulties. There is no excuse for that.

David Taylor: Would my hon. Friend include on her list of smash-and-grabs on the oldest and poorest pensioners the decision by the previous Government to halve inherited SERPS and then to say nothing about it, leaving this Government to pick up the pieces?

Vera Baird: Again, my hon. Friend makes a clear and strong point.
	The report that the Government will produce on women and pensions next year is a big step forward. It will clearly be an assessment not only of pensions policy but, as the Minister said, of all the other aspects that help contribute to women's pension position. It was requested because the Green Paper states that we have introduced the minimum wage, which helps lots of women; we have equal pay for women—of course, we have it only theoretically but are working towards it; more women work; more women spend shorter periods of time out of work caring for children; they are all gravitating towards the Beveridge model of a working person, and they will all eventually qualify for a full basic state pension in the ordinary, national insurance way, or approach such qualification. I overstate the case that the Government make, which is not nearly so glib. Nevertheless, it is necessary to review the position from time to time to ascertain whether such factors are genuinely moving matters forward and helping women to get better national insurance contributions and thus progress towards better state pension provision.
	It is clear that all the factors that I have outlined, which, by and large, go in the right direction for achieving women's eventual qualification for full basic state pension, are not enough. It is never likely to be the case that women will conform to the Beveridge model of a long working life. They will almost inevitably be the primary carers for children for a long time. Hence one returns full circle to the need for inadequate credits for caring to be rectified. Frankly, even if women are not the primary carers and men take on that role, they, too, will fall foul of the inadequate credits for child care and elder care. It does not matter who does the caring, but it is likely that women will do it.
	We must re-examine the current position instead of the one the Liberal Democrats advocate, albeit only for those aged over 75. If all the credits are improved so that it becomes the aim to cover women who are in work, women who are out of work and caring, whoever they care for, and to make the ability to get credits for national insurance open to them all, most people will qualify for a full basic state pension. Do we need to take the extra step that the Liberal Democrats advocate, albeit only at a late age, to scrap the national insurance system, and to start on a different basis to give people a pension for doing nowt or summat?
	I am worried about the Liberal Democrat proposal to abandon entirely the national insurance principle. I have concerns about who is a citizen and who is not, how long people have to be resident before becoming a citizen, and how else someone is chosen to qualify. What happens to people who are not citizens? What do they get? Is there any point in going beyond making national insurance inclusive rather than exclusive? Is there any need to scrap what, I believe, is politically dear to people because it gives them a sense of contributing to what they get back? Is there any purpose, in terms of future social cohesion, in scrapping that principle? What is to be gained by it?
	The discussion has put eligibility for the basic state pension at centre stage. The main problem with the Liberal Democrat proposal is the way in which it will be financed. I have already referred to my constituency of Redcar. A couple of weeks ago, a happy announcement was made that an American business called Huntsman, which had been in Redcar since 1999, when it bought an ethylene plant from ICI, would invest in a polyethylene plant—a downstreamer from the ethylene plant. The ethylene plant employs 800 people; the polyethylene will secure those jobs because it is a downstream plant for the ethylene plant, and polyethylene is sold throughout the country. Currently, the ethylene is exported and re-imported as polyethylene—that is crazy. The new plant will secure the existing 800 jobs and generate another 120. Huntsman made it absolutely clear that the £16.5 million regional selective assistance grant from the Department of Trade and Industry made the difference between investing in the new plant or accepting that the cracker—the ethylene plant—was becoming less viable and profitable and would, in due course, have to be closed down.
	I can tell the hon. Member for Northavon that at least 920 people in Redcar are very pleased indeed that the DTI exists and that it has an industrial development unit capable of providing such grants. I would ask him to consider the peril that he would put the regions in if he scrapped the DTI.
	When Huntsman proposed making more investment, it was bombarded with offers of grants from many other parts of the EU, notably Rotterdam, and it was essential for us to compete. If the hon. Gentleman is really saying that the way to finance his pension proposals is by scrapping the means to do that, I would point out that he might be paying out to the very old, but he would be attacking the younger generation in order to do so. He would be depriving people in regions such as mine, where unemployment is still very high, of much needed employment, and that would be too high a price to pay. That is the fundamental flaw in his seriously flawed policy.

Michael Weir: Several themes have run through this debate. One was the need for consensus, although I have seen very little in what has been said so far. Another was the serious problem of pension provision, particularly for older women. That is largely a result of current pension provision being based on labour market provision, which discriminates against those with an interrupted employment history—particularly women and carers. Because of that link, many such groups find that poverty during their working lives translates into poverty in old age.
	Although much of what we have discussed today has concerned state pension provision, it is also relevant to occupational pensions. Fewer women than men belong to such pension schemes: 52 per cent. of men, compared with 39 per cent. of women. The interrupted occupational histories of many women mean that they have had less time to build up pension rights.
	Also, significantly for women who are getting near retirement age now, it is only in recent years that women gained pension rights through divorce. I have to say that Scotland was well ahead of England in this regard. Until recently, pensions were not treated as an asset on divorce, although they were a significant family asset. That is now changing. Many women now reaching retirement age have not had the benefit of that, and therefore face greater poverty in retirement.
	We have discussed the destruction of the link between earnings and pensions, but perhaps the link between labour market provision and pensions should have been the one that was broken. That is the main attraction of the citizens pension, because it would do that. It would provide a basic pension for all citizens, notwithstanding the difficulties in ascertaining what citizenship involves in certain instances. When the Minister talked about means-testing, he suggested that the difficulty with a citizens pension as opposed to a means-tested one was that someone with a large occupational pension would get the same benefit from a citizens pension as someone on a low income. That is not true, because in the example that he cited, the person getting a £50,000 occupational pension would pay tax on that pension.
	The citizens pension would ensure a basic living pension for everyone. That is important, because we know that one in five of our pensioners still live in poverty. The Government have gone down the road of means-testing, through the pension credit, even though they derided the Tories for doing so when they were in opposition. Means-testing is an inefficient way of dealing with a problem that is rooted in the fact that pension entitlement is attached to the labour market. The fact is that, under the present provision, more than half the over-65s in the United Kingdom were eligible for the means-tested pension credit on its introduction, and that proportion is rising. It will reach nearly three quarters by 2025.
	I pointed out in an intervention on the Minister, to which he did not really respond, that many pensioners—particularly the older ones—are not taking up the pension credit, despite our best efforts to get them to claim whatever they are entitled to under the present system, whether we agree with it or not. Even the Government's own take-up target involves less than three quarters of pensioners by 2006. That will leave a considerable number of pensioners being missed out, and continuing to live in poverty.
	The oldest pensioners are at greatest risk of poverty and in greatest need of pension credit, but are least likely to claim. That may be the reason for the Liberal Democrat idea of targeting more on older pensioners, but it seems to me that the proper role of a citizens pension is to provide for everyone at a reasonable level, and to allow a foundation on which to make additional savings.
	The question of savings is important. One of the problems with mean-testing—which the Government should not brush aside—is that many who have saved something towards their retirement feel that they are being discriminated against because of the effort that they have made. That should be taken into account. Again, the citizens pension idea will get round that to some extent.
	I am conscious of the lack of time and that other Members want to speak in the debate. Although it may be outside the strict confines of the debate, we must consider the question of savings and how people save towards their retirement. Governments, both Labour and Conservative, have tried to get people to save more towards their retirement, to lessen the burden on the state pension. Private and company pensions are the subject of a considerable amount of distrust following the Maxwell case and recent cases such as Allied Steel and Wire, and those problems must also be dealt with.
	The motion refers to more than pensions. I notice that it says a lot about hospitals, which are a devolved matter in Scotland, and I will not comment much on it, other than to note that the Liberals are in coalition with the Labour party in the Scottish Executive, and are therefore partly responsible for hospitals in Scotland, which are the cause of some concern. The Scottish Health Minister has even been summoned to London to appear before Labour MPs today for a grilling.
	The motion also mentions the issue of the pension book. The hon. Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson) spoke at length about that, and I agree with much of what she said. I gave the example of a constituent whom I helped to apply for a Post Office card account. She went through all the forms, complicated though they were, and went back and forward. Eventually, she was told that she was getting the card. She went down to the post office, which said that it had no record of her and gave her another pension book. Two weeks later, of course, the Post Office announced that it was going to close that post office, although I am happy to say that a campaign that I organised was successful in stopping that closure. Therefore there is some hope that closures can be stopped. It is a small matter, but it is very important to pensioners, and the Labour party fails to take that on board at its peril.

Paul Holmes: I shall try to be as concise as possible in the few minutes that are left. The background to this debate is that the pension system in this country is in crisis. There are two legs to the pension system. The basic state pension is completely inadequate, as we have often heard, and the mean-tested pension credit system, which the Government favour as the solution to that, is failing to reach almost 2 million of the poorest pensioners in the country.
	Private pensions, which are needed to take people above the basic state pension, are also experiencing many problems. Not enough people save for a private pension, not enough people save soon enough, and not enough people save enough. Those who do have been hit by stock market problems, by the Chancellor's £5 billion pension fund raid, by the mis-selling scandals that resulted from the previous Conservative's Government deregulation of the selling of pensions, and by the loss of occupational pensions more recently, which has affected constituents of mine who work at Chesterfield Cylinders, Dema Glass and Coalite.
	All that is leading to a spiral of decline in the private pension sector. One of my constituents who worked for Dema Glass received on her 60th birthday, instead of a letter telling her how much pension she would get, a letter telling her that she would get no pension at all or at best 30 per cent. at some time in the future, but it was not certain when. As a result, her daughter, who is in her mid-20s and works for a very good international firm based in Chesterfield, said, "I was going to take out a private pension with the company but what's the point? If that can happen to my mother after a lifetime's saving, there's no point me saving." Confidence must be restored in the private pensions system if that is to be overcome.
	If all that is true of pensioners in general, and of male pensioners, it is even more true of female pensioners, as we have heard.
	Sixty per cent. of pensioners get a bad deal, but most of them are women. Women make up 64 per cent. of the overall pensioner population, but a far higher percentage of the poorest pensioners. Typically, women receive 57 per cent. of the male pension, while only 12 per cent. of women get the full basic state pension in their own right; 25 per cent. of single women pensioners live in poverty. A recent joint report from Age Concern and the Fawcett Society showed that women accounted for 75 per cent. of pensioners on income support. As we have heard today, the origins of that lie in the earlier role of women, who used normally to work in low-paid and part-time jobs and would take long stretches of time out to care for children and other members of the family, the elderly and the sick.
	We have heard that that may change, but very slowly. The women of today begin work on much more equal terms, with equal pay and a different attitude to life. It will take 30 or 40 years for that to feed through, so that they receive decent pensions in their own right when they retire. The Minister and his colleagues, with the exception of the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), have said in the past two or three hours that they are happy with that situation. They are happy with what they are doing for pensioners, and happy with the fact that any benefits that are generated will take 30 or 40 years to have an effect. In the meantime nearly 2 million pensioners, most of them women, must continue to live in poverty.
	I hope that the Minister will have time to answer a specific question. The Minister for Pensions was full of praise for the Pension Service and its attempts to break down the barrier of means-tested benefits and get people on to pension credit. I have said the same in the House and in Committee debates. I have observed the good work that the service is doing in Chesterfield, for instance. Last Wednesday, however, along with two of the Minister's Back-Bench colleagues, I met members of the Public and Commercial Services Union. They said that one suggestion relating to the proposed job cuts of between 30,000 and 40,000 would affect workers in the Pension Service. If that innovatory service has indeed proved effective, can the Minister reassure us that it will not be hit? That would undermine the one bit of good work that is being done. I agree with the Minister for Pensions about that.
	The recently announced policy of the Liberal Democrats is to give all those over 75—mostly women—a decent pension of £105 a week. That would avoid the present deterrent of means-testing. It has been welcomed across the board—not by the other two major parties in the House, but by financial commentators in the last week. It has been welcomed throughout the press, from the normally Conservative-supporting elements to others, as being realistic, costed and achievable, and as a first step towards a fair basic pension for all.
	I hope for the sake of the poorest pensioners—most of them women—that the Minister takes the advice of the right hon. Member for Birkenhead. I hope that he borrows our policy and implements it, because that would be for the good of the poorest pensioners in the country. If he fails to do that—as I imagine he will—I look forward very much to fighting the election, in a few months' time, on our policy of providing a fair deal for the poorest pensioners in our society. It is the first time that that will have happened. Let me refer to our earlier debate, and add that I also look forward to fighting the election on our policy of scrapping the tuition fees introduced by the Government, and introducing a much fairer system of free access to higher education.

Sandra Gidley: I am afraid that, owing to limited time, I shall be unable to respond in detail to some points that have been made. However, I will say to the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) that it would probably help if he listened to my hon. Friend the Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb), because a number of his questions were answered in my hon. Friend's speech.
	It was clear from the length of time for which the hon. Gentleman spoke that, although the Conservatives may have some sort of pensions policy, its bearing on women was an afterthought. It seems to have been a case of "We have a problem; what are we going to do?" I have little to add to what was said by the hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird), who highlighted the considerable flaws in the Conservatives' policy.
	I want my winding-up speech to supplement the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Northavon, who has long recognised the particular problems faced by older women and has carried out a huge amount of campaigning work on the subject, particularly on the injustice of the married women's stamp. He has highlighted the fact that many of those women did not know that they were signing away their rights to a pension. A generation of women thought that they would be looked after in their old age only to find out that that was far from the case.
	Within that context, the self-congratulatory nature of the Government amendment is particularly distasteful. The motion might just have been acceptable one year into the new Government, but it appears that they believe that it is something to brag about, even though the Government admit that it will be next year before they even report on women pensioners, let alone do anything about it. I am disappointed that the hon. and learned Member for Redcar had to highlight the work of the Fawcett Society before it became an issue that the Department for Work and Pensions acknowledged. I am delighted that has happened now, but why could it not have happened six years ago? I sometimes despair.
	The rest of the Prime Minister's amendment fudges the other issues mentioned in our motion in similar fashion, but I want to concentrate on the health of older women. Groups of pensioners will talk at length about their pensions. It is something that they are rightly indignant about, interested in and engaged in, but once that discussion is out of the way, other issues come to the fore. Our motion could have been much longer, but we wanted to focus on a few specific issues.
	The Government happily announce in their amendment that 99 per cent. of NHS trusts provide single-sex accommodation for planned admissions and they give themselves a big pat on the back for that. That simple statement is a masterpiece of deception and I want to draw the House's attention to Prime Minister's Question Time on 19 November 1996. The then Leader of the Opposition—now our Prime Minister—asked the then Prime Minister:
	"Why has the Prime Minister not yet made good the promise given two years ago to eliminate mixed-sex wards in our hospitals?"—[Official Report, 19 November 1996; Vol. 285, c. 831.]
	We should note that there was no mention of planned admissions or sleeping accommodation. If that issue was worthy of righteous indignation as long ago as 1996, why is such a simple measure taking so long to achieve?
	Naturally enough, when the Labour Government came to power—I was pleased that the Tories were no more—the then Secretary of State for Health took the expected action. He blamed the Tories. The right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) said:
	"As far as we can see, under the programme that they left us with, in very many hospitals there was no possibility of eliminating mixed-sex wards in the 20th century. We will speed up that process."—[Official Report, 20 May 1997; Vol. 294, c. 492.]
	The Tories at least had their much maligned patients charter, which made it clear to patients that they had the right, except in emergencies, to be told whether they would be in a ward for men and women. It was stated that in all cases people should "expect" single-sex washing and toilet facilities. It also clearly stated:
	"If you would prefer to be cared for in single sex accommodation (either a single sex ward or 'bay' area within a larger ward which offers equal privacy) your wishes will be respected wherever possible."
	We all know that the patients charter disappeared to be replaced by something called "Your NHS", which was by no means as specific about patients' rights in this matter.
	The amendment before us today says absolutely nothing about washing facilities. It may not be a big issue compared with pensions, but I shall explain why it is a big issue for some people. I can assume only that the Government do not believe that single-sex facilities are important or even desired by elderly people in hospital.
	I visited Southampton general hospital only last week. It is an excellent hospital in many ways, but I was surprised to find that the toilet bays were often not single sex. There were male and female cubicles side by side, but before a male could access the male toilet, he had to walk past the washing area, which was screened off only by a very flimsy curtain, offering absolutely no privacy whatever.
	I suspect that many other hospitals provide similar facilities, so I assume that that shows that the Government are interested only in sleeping accommodation, and that they are not concerned about the wider picture.
	The sad thing is that in many cases it is not a question of extra money. With a little thought, the problems could be solved by rearranging the existing infrastructure, but hospitals are so fixated on hitting every Government target that they simply do not deem such issues to be high priority. I can understand that: if I worked in Southampton general hospital, I would want to keep my job too.
	People who think that this is not such a big issue should speak to a constituent of mine. I shall not reveal her name so as to protect her privacy, but she was placed on a mixed-sex ward in the Royal South Hants hospital in Winchester. I am not complaining about the original placement, as it was an emergency, but she was still there after several days, even though she had asked repeatedly to be moved, and even though one of the male patients kept on exposing himself to her. That is totally unacceptable, and it should not have happened to my constituent or to any other patient.
	The Minister may say that the national service framework for older people is in place, and that NSF standard 1 reduces discrimination. When the NSF was launched, Professor Ian Philp, the national director for older people's services said:
	"The NSF will mean that a person can expect to receive high-quality care and treatment, regardless of their age or whether they live. This will make age discrimination a thing of the past. Older people will be treated as individuals, with respect and dignity".
	My constituent saw no evidence of dignity. Hers may have been an extreme case, and one that I hope is not replicated widely, but mixed-sex toilets and washing facilities do not provide dignity either. I urge the Government to ensure that what happens in hospitals reflects their rhetoric. I hope that they will change the words that they use to produce the right results.
	The House should not just take my word for this. A recent Mind report entitled "Wardwatch" stated that 23 per cent. of recent and current in-patient respondents had been accommodated in mixed-sex wards. A further 31 per cent. of respondents did not have access to single-sex bathroom facilities.
	Disappointingly, the Government's response was to belittle the report. They should take seriously the problems highlighted in it, and find out what is going wrong. Professor Philp stated also that age discrimination was a thing of the past, and that is the impression that the Government also like to portray. Therefore, I shall talk briefly about the most prominent example of age discrimination in the NHS—the cut-off age for breast cancer screening.
	The cut-off age was 65, and I am delighted that the Government are to raise that to 70 by the end of the year, but that is for people who are routinely invited for screening by the NHS and it completely ignores the fact that 40 per cent. of breast cancer cases involve women over 70. That is bad enough, but it also promotes the dangerous misconception among older women that they have a decreased risk of contracting breast cancer. Therefore, although women over that age may request screening, the low level of awareness of the risk means that tumours may not be detected until it is too late.
	According to the Breakthrough Breast Cancer research centre, the most important risk factor is age. Many consultants have gone on record to say that increasing the cut-off age to 80 would be a cost-effective measure.
	In 2002, 6,320 women aged 70 and over died from breast cancer. That is more than 55 per cent. of the total number of women of all ages who died as a result of breast cancer in the same year. Who knows how the numbers might have changed if the screening had been available?
	That is just one example of discrimination, and it is Liberal Democrat policy to outlaw the denial of treatment on the basis of absolute age barriers. We would also require the NHS executive to issue national guidance to tackle the problem of discrimination on the grounds of age.
	The Government deny that age discrimination exists, but Age Concern has received reports of both implicit and explicit age discrimination at all levels in the NHS. It issued a report in 2000, but little seems to have changed since. Despite the lip service paid by the Government to age discrimination, many people know that the problem is a real one.
	To sum up, the Liberal Democrats are tackling the issues that affect pensioners. Our proposals to axe the council tax have not been mentioned today, but they would benefit 70 per cent. of pensioners, and our pension proposals would tackle the particular problems faced by older women.
	There are other problems, but we cannot do everything at once. There is still a huge mountain to climb. Above all, however, we will be serious when in government about eliminating age discrimination in all its forms.

Chris Pond: It seems only last week that we debated pensions on an Opposition motion and, indeed, it was. We have heard many thoughtful speeches today from Members on both sides of the House and I am delighted to welcome those Liberal Democrat Back Benchers who have been able to join us for the last few minutes of the debate on their motion, but who were not able to be here earlier.
	The constant theme of all the speeches was that women pensioners do not enjoy as comfortable a retirement as they deserve. The Government recognise that the majority of pensioners are women and we are committed to ensuring that pension reforms improve women's rights. That is why the Government's priority has been to tackle poverty among the poorest pensioners, many of them women. In the year before we took office, 35 per cent. of single female pensioners were living in relative poverty. As a result of the action we have taken to tackle pensioner poverty, that figure is down to 21 per cent., even before the pension credit comes into effect. But there is clearly more to do if we want all pensioners to share in the nation's rising prosperity.
	As we heard from my hon. Friend the Minister for Pensions earlier, the root of the challenge lies in the uneven distribution of opportunities during working life and of caring responsibilities. That is a problem that has gradually gained importance as a result of the breakdown of the model Beveridge family. But we have come a long way since Beveridge's time. The Government have introduced a range of important measures to benefit women and we do not intend to stop.
	Our measures to help women differ from the advice given by the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) not so long ago, when he recommended that one way to respond to demographic challenges was for women to have more babies. Our measures do not expect today's women to have children so that they can enjoy a comfortable retirement. Instead, our most significant measure to benefit today's pensioners has been the introduction of the pension credit. Having sat through two debates this afternoon with the hon. Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb), I have to tell him that he is developing an unfortunate tendency to sneer. The pension credit has had a huge and immediate positive impact on the living standards of many women pensioners. Two thirds of those entitled to pension credit are women, and half are aged 75 and over. More than 2 million women are now receiving the pension credit and we abhor the Opposition proposals that would take that away from the poorest pensioners. I can tell the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Paul Holmes) that although we always envisaged that the number of people working in the Pension Service would decline once the pension credit had been launched, we are committed to maintaining the level of service to pensioners.
	Pension credit has not been our only response to pensioner poverty. The introduction of winter fuel payments has helped 11.5 million pensioners, more than half of them women. Those payments are worth £200 a year, or £300 for households with a person aged 80 or over. In addition, more than 5 million households will gain from the over-70s additional payment. Some 60 per cent. of those aged over 70 are women, as are 66 per cent. of those aged over 80.
	The state second pension, which the Conservatives plan to scrap along with the new deal if they get the chance, will boost the pensions of low and moderately paid employees and, for the first time, provide an additional pension for carers and long-term disabled people. As we have heard in this debate, that is of particular benefit to women, many of whom work part time or as carers. In fact, some 70 per cent. of the 5 million low earners who will benefit from the state second pension are women, as are almost all of the 2.5 million carers who will benefit.
	We have also done much to improve the pension position of tomorrow's female pensioners. We are ensuring that all pensioners have as fair as possible an environment in which to save. The hon. Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson) referred to wartime and post-war outworkers.
	I think the hon. Lady will agree that it was sad that when the person she described as her heroine was in office she abolished the minimum wage for those very outworkers and home workers.
	By tackling poverty during working age, we are giving people the means to avoid poverty in old age; for example, the minimum wage and the working tax credit overwhelmingly benefit women, thereby increasing their savings potential. The Government have also made a substantial investment in additional resources for child care to enable many of those caring for children to return to work.
	We recognise that women are under-represented among those with private sector occupational pensions; in particular, women who work part-time are less likely to be offered and to take up employer-based pensions than men or women who work full-time. Nevertheless, more than 2 million working-age women are members of private sector occupational pension schemes, so the measures in the Pensions Bill to improve the security and simplify the structure of existing occupational pension provision are relevant to women. The House will remember that the Conservatives declined to support that Bill on Second Reading.
	Stakeholder pensions, introduced by the Government, are beneficial to women in the modern labour market who move regularly between employers, who take a break from work—to raise a family, for example—or who have family who can pay into a pension for them. We are committed to improving pension information for everyone to ensure that they are aware of their pension position and the choices they face, which is especially important for women.
	As I said, the Government have done much to help women. Today, the hon. Member for Northavon set out his plans for a citizens pension, which he says will help many women; but it will not be targeted at the poorest women. Taking account of the offsetting losses in pension credit, tax and national insurance, the poorest pensioners will gain nothing from the hon. Gentleman's proposals. The biggest gainers will be those in the top income deciles.
	At a stroke, the Liberals plan to scrap the national insurance scheme, which is the bedrock of pensions as they operate today and was established in 1911 by another great Liberal—as he was at the time—Winston Churchill. People who have contributed, in many cases for an entire working life, towards their national insurance pension would find that it was swept away.
	I have great respect for pressure groups. I used to run one, as did my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) and my hon. Friend the Minister for Pensions. The hon. Member for Northavon used to work for one, too. The problem is that he thinks he still does. Instead of representing a national political party, serious about its potential to run the country, he still wheels out the latest wheeze he comes across—ill-thought-out, uncosted and half-baked. As we pointed out last week and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) pointed out earlier, those plans will be paid for by scrapping the DTI, the £2 billion that supports the post office network, the mechanisms for the minimum wage and protection for consumers and employees.
	In a move described by the hon. Member for Havant as a "triumphant success", the Conservatives, who scrapped the earnings link in 1980 at the earliest opportunity, now plan to reintroduce it. They are calling for an increase in the basic state pension in line with earnings, but we know that the vast majority of women would not gain from that increase. They would lose from the abolition of the state second pension and, indeed, of pension credit, with which the Conservatives plan to pay for the increase.
	An independent analysis by the Pensions Policy Institute concluded that under Conservative policies
	"the average woman will lose".
	The Leader of the Opposition agreed with that conclusion. Last year, he told us:
	"Those who are entitled to the pension credit and do claim . . . will not be better off.
	Most of those people will be women.
	We are not complacent; we want to do everything that we can to help women to build up a decent income in retirement. That is why we are committed to producing a report on women and pensions by the end of next year, and I pay tribute to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar for introducing those proposals and to my hon. Friend the Minister for Pensions for accepting them.
	Taken together, the measures that I have described to the House today are significant in meeting the challenges that many women in this country face in respect of pensions. They demonstrate that we have a coherent, sustainable long-term—

Andrew Stunell: rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.
	Question, That the Question be now put, put and agreed to.

Question put accordingly, That the original words stand part of the Question:—
	The House divided: Ayes 182, Noes 250.

Question accordingly negatived.
	Question, That the proposed words be there added, put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 31 (Questions on amendments): —
	The House divided: Ayes 248, Noes 175.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	Mr. Speaker forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.
	Resolved,
	That this House welcomes the Pensions Green Paper as the first ever statement of government policy to explicitly consider the needs of women; further welcomes the commitment by the Government to report next year on the pensions position of women; supports steps to improve the incomes of women pensioners and enable more women than ever to build up pensions; welcomes in particular the introduction of Pension Credit, benefiting over two million women, and the state second pension, helping millions of the lowest paid women and women with caring responsibilities to build up a second pension; believes that both main Opposition parties' policies are unaffordable, unworkable and do nothing for the very poorest; notes that the Liberal Democrat policies will be financed by scrapping DTI programmes, which boost the wealth of the nation through investment in research and innovation; supports the conclusion of the Pensions Policy Institute that 'the average woman will lose' under proposed Conservative policy; notes that 99 per cent. of NHS trusts provide single-sex sleeping accommodation for planned admissions; and, as there are 10,000 wards in use across the NHS, congratulates the Government on this achievement; applauds the extension of breast screening to women aged 65 to 70, resulting in an additional 200,000 women being invited since April 2001; commends the Government's historic commitment to tackling pensioner poverty, which is continuing to do most for the poorest women pensioners; and welcomes the £10 billion extra that the Government is spending on pensioners this year compared with the 1997 system.

DELEGATED LEGISLATION

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6)(Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),

Family Law

That the draft Child Support (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2004, which were laid before this House on 5th July, be approved.—[Mr. Watson.]
	Question agreed to.
	Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6)(Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),

Northern Ireland

That the draft Northern Ireland Act 2000 (Modification) (No. 2) Order 2004, which was laid before this House on 8th July, be approved.—[Mr. Watson.]
	Question agreed to.
	Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6)(Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),

Local Government

That the draft Business Improvement Districts (England) Regulations 2004, which were laid before this House on 7th September, be approved.—[Mr. Watson.]
	Question agreed to.
	Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6)(Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),

Education

That the draft Student Fees (Approved Plans) (England) Regulations 2004, which were laid before this House on 7th September, be approved.—[Mr. Watson.]
	Question agreed to.

EUROPEAN COMMUNITY DOCUMENTS

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 119(9)(European Standing Committees),

Driving Licences

That this House takes note of European Union document No. 15820/03, draft Directive on driving licences (Recasting); and endorses the Government's objective to combat driving licence fraud and improve road safety without imposing undue burdens on industry, private individuals or law enforcers.—[Mr. Watson.]
	Question agreed to.

PETITIONS
	 — 
	Crossrail Depot

Andrew Rosindell: My constituents are gravely concerned at the prospect that Crossrail is to construct a large railway depot in the heart of Romford. It will particularly affect the Crowlands and Rush Green areas of Romford, running from St. Edward's school to the Waterloo estates and from Oldchurch hospital to the Dagenham border.
	My constituents are fearful that the effects could be devastating for the whole community and for the lives of local people, not to mention the effects on the local environment. The roads that will be particularly affected are Beechfield gardens, Crow lane and the surrounding roads, Ainsley avenue, Sheringham avenue, Jutsums lane, Bridport avenue, Southern way and Stockland road.
	I should like to make several key points. The Crossrail depot will cause massive disruption to the whole community. The consultation has taken place—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman should not be making a speech. He should present the petition. There are words set out for the hon. Gentleman. If he reiterates those words, everyone will be happy, including the Speaker.

Andrew Rosindell: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The petition reads:
	The people of the Romford Parliamentary Constituency declare that they are wholly opposed to the construction of a Crossrail Depot within Romford.
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons does all it can to ensure that the depot is not built as it will cause considerable inconvenience and disruption to the people of Romford.
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	The petition is signed by no less than 2,199 people and has been collected by the Crossrail action group.
	To lie upon the Table.

King's Own Scottish Borderers

Michael Moore: The future of the King's Own Scottish Borderers and the Royal Scots is a cause of real concern to people in the borders. Along with my hon. Friend the Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Sir Archy Kirkwood) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), I have met the Secretary of State for Defence on two occasions to argue for the continuation of these regiments. The strength of feeling in our constituencies is illustrated by the enthusiasm with which people have signed the petition, which reads:
	The petition of the constituents of Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale, the constituents of Roxburgh and Berwickshire and other concerned individuals
	Declares that the doubts about the future of the King's Own Scottish Borderers regiment following the announcement on defence spending by the Secretary of State on Wednesday 21 July 2004 are causing growing concern in south-east Scotland. The Petitioners highlight the proud military traditions of the King's Own Scottish Borderers, the regiment's successful contributions to historic and recent military conflicts and peace-keeping missions around the world and its strong ties with the communities of the Scottish Borders in particular.
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge Her Majesty's government to reconsider proposals which would reduce the number of Scottish battalions, to make provision for the retention of all of the Scottish regiments, and in particular to reject any plan to disband or amalgamate the King's Own Scottish Borderers.
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	To lie upon the Table.

GURKHAS

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Watson.]

Ann Widdecombe: I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the issue of our treatment of Gurkhas, particularly so far as immigration law is concerned. The matter concerns many hon. Members: I have agreed to the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams) making a brief intervention at a later stage, and my hon. Friends the Members for Surrey Heath (Mr. Hawkins) and for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth) and my right hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot) have campaigned for more equitable treatment for the Gurkhas for a long time.
	I shall put the debate in context. On 6 March 2003, I was fortunate enough to obtain an Adjournment debate on this subject. During the course of that debate, I raised the treatment of Gurkhas in immigration law. I was particularly concerned that, although a Gurkha can serve 15 years with the British armed forces, which they normally do, and that that time is likely to include deployment on active service, those 15 years are not taken into account if they subsequently apply for leave to remain, leave to re-enter having returned to Nepal or naturalisation.
	I followed up my Adjournment debate with a letter to the then Minister of State at the Home Office, the right hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Beverley Hughes), on 10 April 2003. On 1 July 2003, the then Minister replied and, among other assurances, were these words:
	"Officials from the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Home Office are in the process of reviewing current policy on naturalisation and settlement of Ghurkhas. A further meeting is being arranged to explore the possibility of immigration or work permit concessions that may enable Ghurkhas to return to the UK after discharge."
	I felt hopeful when I received that letter, but I should have known better. Nothing happened.
	On 12 January 2004, I tabled a written question to the Home Secretary asking what was happening. The then Minister replied on his behalf on 15 January and said that the review would report "shortly". Nothing further happened, so I rather boringly tabled exactly the same written question on 29 March, and the then Minister, doubtless with equal weariness, replied, yet again, that the review would report shortly.
	My patience is almost limitless. I did nothing at all until we returned from the summer recess, when I tabled the same question, without great hope that I would receive anything other than the same reply. On that occasion, a slight variation occurred: the Minister said that he would reply as soon as possible, and I look forward to his giving that answer tonight. That is the context in which I sought and obtained this Adjournment debate. I have patiently endured the long process of waiting for the Government to rectify the disgraceful treatment of people who have served us well.
	The Minister need not glare when I say that, because that treatment was not invented by him—indeed, it was not invented by any one Government. It has gone on for rather a long time, but that does not make it any less disgraceful.
	The Gurkha regiment has won 26 Victoria crosses, 13 of which were won by Gurkhas themselves. They have fought in nearly every conflict since world war two: in the Falklands, in the first Gulf war, in East Timor, in Sierra Leone, and most recently, in Iraq. Yet, as I said in my Adjournment debate of 6 March 2003, we show our gratitude with a P45 and a one-way ticket to Nepal. After 15 years' service, they cannot stay here.
	Let us suppose that such a Gurkha has a British child—that is, a child born in this country whom the law recognises as British. Even in those circumstances, the parent cannot remain in this country once his period of service is up. On proof that the parents have returned to Nepal and are settled there, one parent, but only one, can accompany the child to the UK; but when the child reaches the age of 12 that parent must go back. That means that a British citizen is either forcibly returned—by which I mean moral force, not deportation force—or is left alone in this country at the tender age of 12.
	That prompts the question: whatever sort of country are we? I would propose that any Gurkha who has completed 15 years' service in this country and who applies to either remain, re-enter or be naturalised should be treated on exactly the same basis as anybody else who had been in this country for 15 years would be treated. I do not ask for them to be treated with special favour, but merely to have equality with others who have been in this country for 15 years.
	In case there is any suggestion that this would flood the immigration system beyond its capacity to cope, only some 200 to 250 Gurkhas a year complete 15 years' service. These men are well trained, well disciplined and dutiful, and they would make ideal British citizens.
	Let us make the obvious comparison. If somebody comes into this country unlawfully—in the back of a lorry, for example—or enters lawfully then decides to overstay, history shows that after a due period of time that person will benefit from an amnesty. Even if they do not so benefit, if they apply to regularise their position they will ask for the time that they have spent in this country to be taken into account and, as I well know, it is. Yet despite the 15 years' service of Gurkhas, it is as if they do not exist. Not one of them is taken into account. Any member of the NATO armed services can enter this country after discharge and apply for leave to stay here. They could be Frenchmen or Turkish infantrymen: they could be anybody. They are allowed to stay, whereas Gurkhas who have served the British Army directly, and may well have shed blood in that cause, are not.
	In the previous debate, I raised other issues that I accept are not the Minister's direct responsibility, but I would nevertheless be very glad if he discussed them with his right hon. and hon. Friends in the Ministry of Defence. One of those issues is the absolute cruelty of refusing Gurkhas the right to have their families with them for more than three years out of the 15. It is true that those of the rank of colour sergeant or above can have a greater level of family accompaniment, but that is only 10 per cent. of them. Rank-and-file Gurkhas—the other 90 per cent.—can have their families with them for only three out of the 15 years.
	Even if one tots up all the long leave that they are allowed in Nepal, they will still spend 10 years out of their 15 without their families. Any British soldier who is posted—not on active service—abroad can take his family with him. Why do we assume that Gurkhas are not normal human beings who want their kids and wives with them? What is so different about them that we limit them ferociously to three years? I use the word ferocious because we often have surplus married accommodation but it is not put at the disposal of Gurkhas. The rule is most rigidly enforced.
	When I previously raised the issue in the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley), who is a member of the Britain-Nepal group, made a timely intervention to point out that given the amount of time that has passed since the archaic agreements that resulted in such injustices, a fresh look is necessary. As I said, I was delighted when I was told that a fresh look was in process, but nothing has come of it.
	I raised the matter in the first place because I have in my constituency a Gurkha unit that is attached to the 36th Engineers, who were in the recent deployment to Iraq. I know how highly esteemed they are. Whenever we have a ceremonial parade in Maidstone, the Gurkha unit always attracts the warmest applause from my constituents. They are highly esteemed, yet poorly treated.
	I am assisted somewhat nowadays because a national newspaper has, at long last, taken up the cause. I understand that the Daily Express has received 36,000 positive responses to its campaign to ensure better treatment for Gurkhas. I greatly look forward to the Minister's reply and hope that he will take my comments in the spirit that they are intended, which is not party political, but an appeal for the most basic common humanity that a Government should show. I am rather appalled not only at the 18-month delay that I endured but at the fact that we are still discussing the matter in the 21st century and somehow believing that there is still cause to argue about it. There should be no cause; we should right the injustice immediately.

Roger Williams: I thank the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) for giving me an opportunity to say a few words, and I congratulate her on her assiduous work on behalf of Gurkhas and Gurkha families who have served this country so well over the years.
	I initially became interested in the Gurkha soldiers and regiments because a demonstration company that assists with training platoon commanders and senior non-commissioned officers is stationed at Derring Lines in my constituency. The finest NCOs in this country owe many of their skills to the assistance and work of that Gurkha company.
	Earlier this year, I visited Brunei with the armed forces parliamentary scheme. The 2nd Royal Gurkha Rifles, which had just returned from Afghanistan, is currently stationed there. Other regiments are building on the work that they initiated in Afghanistan and the trust that they formed with the Afghan people. Britain and those other regiments have benefited from their work.
	The Gurkhas are highly esteemed for their qualities as soldiers, and their loyalty to the nation and the Crown is undisputed. However, they have problems with their terms and conditions of service. Accompanied married service, to which the right hon. Lady referred, is a genuine problem for them. In the three years that they are allowed to have their wives and families with them, especially when they are based at Brecon, they are well integrated into the community. The wives find jobs, the children go to school, and they play a huge part in the community's understanding of the diversity of culture in the rest of the world.
	I have also become aware that when Gurkha soldiers finish their service after 15 years, as they have to do unless they become NCOs or officers, they have little alternative but to return to their country of origin, where their pension may be of some use to them, although it is very small compared with the pension that a British soldier gets. Some of those Gurkhas wish to stay in this country a little longer to build up some financial security for the time that they will spend in Nepal. They find it difficult because they are not given the same opportunities as other people from their country who have not served in the British Army, and I am pleased that the right hon. Lady has brought this matter to the attention of the House.
	There has been concern in the Royal Gurkha Regiment that a number of its soldiers were leaving the service early to join commercial organisations providing security in Iraq and Afghanistan. They leave the British Army to do that so that they can build up the financial means to retire to Nepal. It is a great shame that they should have to leave the Army before they have to, in order to achieve that. If they were given the certainty that they could remain in Britain for a certain length of time, they would not need to take up such employment.
	I do not believe that many Gurkhas would wish to remain in this country for ever, because they have a great affinity for their home country and want to return there to play a part in the reconstruction and improvement of the area. They are simply looking for an opportunity to stay here for a short while to build up some financial security before they go back to Nepal.
	I support the work that the right hon. Lady is doing. It is important for the Gurkhas that they should have the confidence to serve this country, and I shall listen with interest to the Minister's reply.

Des Browne: I congratulate the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) on being doubly fortunate in having secured two Adjournment debates on this important subject over the past 18 months, and I welcome this debate. May I also thank the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams) for his contribution? I should like to remind him that he is but one of a number of Members on both sides of the House who have spoken out in support of the general thrust of the right hon. Lady's argument. He is fortunate to have been granted this opportunity to contribute to another Member's debate, and he represents a significant number of Members who have contacted either my Department or the Ministry of Defence on this issue. The support in the House for this issue reflects the level of support that the Daily Express has generated among its readership.
	I am well aware of the high regard in which the Gurkhas are held in this country, and of the valued contribution that they make during their service with the British armed forces. As I was preparing for this debate, I read the right hon. Lady's previous Adjournment debate on the subject. She has repeated tonight some of the observations that she made about the distinguished history of the Gurkhas, and I am sure that the legend of honour of the Gurkhas could occupy the House for some time, if we were to debate their heroism and service to British society and its armed forces.
	I am also acutely aware of the concern sometimes expressed about the terms and conditions of the Gurkhas' service, and I shall deal with the specific points that the right hon. Lady raised if there is time for me to do so. She reminded the House that a review is being carried out, and I am sure that she would not expect me to pre-empt that work by making an announcement tonight. However, this debate gives me the opportunity to put the issue in context and to respond to her questions.

Ann Widdecombe: rose—

Des Browne: If the right hon. Lady wishes to raise the issue of the time that the review has been going on for, I will deal with that specifically, and appropriately, in response to the debate. I will do it now if she wants me to do so.

Ann Widdecombe: When the Minister comes to respond on the time that has already elapsed, what I and, I am sure, other Members would be far more interested to hear, is how much time has yet to elapse before we get those results?

Des Browne: To the extent that any Minister is ever able to do that—the right hon. Lady knows that it is limited—I will endeavour to give an answer to that question.
	At the outset—although I am now some way into my speech—I want to say that I am very grateful to the right hon. Lady for saying that this should not be reduced to a party political issue. The issue is far too important for that. I did not want to be brought by contributions to this debate to have to remind the House of the history of this matter—of course, Governments of a different hue from the current Government had opportunities to deal with this issue. Circumstances change, and as the right hon. Lady reminds us, we are in the 21st century, and it is time to look forward and not back. Some of those who comment on these issues outside the House ought to be reminded—and I would be grateful if she would repeat some of her comments outside—that this is not a party political issue, and that the situation persisted long before this Government came to power. While it needs to be resolved—I accept that, in the 21st century—that is not because of the actions of this Government.
	The Government recognise the enormous contribution that the Gurkhas have made, serving across the world for the UK's armed forces. I want to take this opportunity simply to thank them for their bravery and their loyalty. Ministers are sympathetic to concerns about their current situation, which, as the right hon. Lady reminded us, has applied for the past 50 years. I reassure the House that Ministers, including me, have focused on a solution that works for the next 50 years, because the relationship between the Nepalese and British people has been of mutual benefit, and we ought to find solutions to these persistent problems.
	On the time that the review has taken, it has been conducted in line with the undertaking given by the former Defence Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy (Dr. Moonie), in the right hon. Lady's debate on 6 March 2003. Officials of the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office have been conducting a joint review on current policy on naturalisation and settlement of Gurkhas, and in particular, they are looking at how current immigration policy impacts on Gurkhas on discharge. That review is nearing completion—[Interruption.] I know that that is a different form of words from that which the right hon. Lady—

Ann Widdecombe: Will the Minister give way?

Des Browne: No. I want to deal, as the right hon. Lady requested, with the issue of why it has taken so long.
	This is not by any stretch of the imagination as simple as identifying an apparent injustice and seeking to resolve it. As one would have expected, the review has identified complex legal issues, on which complex legal advice is being sought. We need to be sure that we understand what impact change might have in relation, for example, to ensuring that any future policy is not discriminatory, and that the Gurkhas obtain the best advantage from it.
	Because we share a common objective that the relationship of the Nepalese people with the Brigade of Gurkhas and the British Army continues, we need to consider the impact on recruitment and retention of Gurkhas, which is not straightforward by any stretch of the imagination, as I am sure that the right hon. Lady appreciates and understands. We need to consider changes to current pension arrangements to ensure that they do not disadvantage Gurkhas. We need to consider the impact on the Nepalese economy. We need to consider ensuring continued cohesion of Gurkha units serving in the British Army. We also need to consider how current immigration policy impacts on Gurkhas, the scope for change, and immigration or work permit concessions. Fundamentally, care needs to be taken to ensure that the practices underpinning the tripartite agreement, which dates back to 1947, are not undermined.
	The review has been wide-ranging. It has included discussions of settlement, work permits, naturalisation, and welfare issues, including those affecting dependants, and the issues are complex. I hope, however, that we will shortly be able to resolve those issues as the review draws to a conclusion.

Ann Widdecombe: Will the Minister please interpret for me the difference in Ministerspeak between "shortly" and "nearing completion"?

Des Browne: I did not intend to convey any different messages. I intended to give the right hon. Lady the impression that we were moving to the point of completion. Because we are dealing with issues of advice and consideration of advice, and because a number of people are involved—I cannot make the decision alone, but must engage in consultation—I cannot bind any individuals to a timetable that is unreasonable. I am sure that she and the House will understand that. I cannot bind other people's thought processes.
	In my introductory remarks—which have now taken up the bulk of my speech—I have tried to explain the complexity of the decisions involved. I do not know whether, when she was a Home Office Minister, the right hon. Lady had an opportunity to go into that complexity, but if she did not I must say, with respect, that she is at a disadvantage. Having done so myself, I do not think it unreasonable to have taken much of last year to set up the review, take the necessary advice and reach the point that we have reached. We should bear in mind the history, and the fact that the solution will need to serve us for at least another 50 years.
	It seems to me distinctly unreasonable—in the context of the time scale of not just the service of the Gurkhas to the British Army but the persistence of the present agreement and arrangements—to keep saying that it is all taking far too long. It is not taking far too long, given what has to be done. I am sure that when announcements are made and their consequences are appreciated, Members throughout the House, along with those outside who are aware of the issues, will agree that it has not taken too long.
	Let me try to deal quickly with some of the specific issues that the right hon. Lady asked me about. She repeated some of the arguments that she advanced in her earlier Adjournment debate. In particular, she asked me to intercede with the Ministry of Defence with regard to the issue of accompanying families. Partly as a result of what she said in that earlier debate, that issue too is being reviewed by the MOD. I am not in a position to tie the MOD and its Ministers to any time scale, but I understand that Ministers expect to make announcements later this year. I am sure that if the issues can be resolved in that time, she will be content.
	The right hon. Lady asserted that NATO troops are allowed to settle in the United Kingdom. I am not sure exactly which NATO troops she was thinking of. It is not my understanding that troops who served with NATO are entitled by the immigration laws to acquire settlement status in the UK. It is, however, true that Commonwealth troops serving in the British Army can settle. That is my understanding of the law, but I shall have it checked, and if I have inadvertently given the House incorrect information I shall write to the right hon. Lady.
	The right hon. Lady drew attention to something of which I was not aware, and as a result I shall ensure that it is looked into. I refer to her assertion that children can be left here when their parents are required to return to Nepal. I agree that that is not an appropriate way in which to treat children, and I should have thought that it was inconsistent with our domestic legislation, which constrains us to act in the best interests of individual children. My simple approach is that most children are better off with their parents, if their parents are loving and caring. I am not aware of the arrangement to which she referred, but I will look into it and write to her.
	I see that I am running out of time. Let me finally reassure the House that the current review is being conducted in the best interests of the Gurkhas. In the meantime, outstanding applications have been held in limbo, as it were—held aside—to ensure that—
	The motion having been made after Seven o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. Deputy Speaker adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
	Adjourned at Eight o'clock.